‘A colossally stupid move’: Watch MSNBC analyst annihilate ‘Rudy Giuliani’s destruction of creditability tour’
Katie Phang on MSNBC/Screenshot
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Rudy Giuliani’s media tour as some rich asshole’s new attorney is not drawing rave reviews from attorneys. Stormy Daniels attorney Michael Avenatti, for example, has bragged that “the constant media/PR pressure has forced the rich asshole, Cohen, et al. to make a series of huge errors and to make damaging admissions helpful to our case.”
On MSNBC Sunday afternoon, Miami-based attorney and analyst Katie Phang went off on the strategy of sending Giuliani on talk shows “a colossally stupid move on behalf of the rich asshole.”
“I now call it Rudy Giuliani’s destruction of creditability tour,” she said. “The reality is that their stories are not straight, and the fact that Giuliani is a mouthpiece for his client, not a spokesperson. And that’s a key distinction with a difference. If I am your surrogate I go out and make the rounds on these shows and I say what I say. Because number one you and I ostensibly have had privileged communications that I am now sharing with the world. And number two, I am promoting a theory. But what is that legal theory? Nobody knows.”
Phang said she’s confused by the whole thing—especially that it hasn’t been called off yet.
“It’s absurd that Guiliani is doing this,” she said. “I’m shocked that he keeps going, day by day, to do it. And from a legal standpoint it’s creating ha and it will be the downfall of the rich asshole if he ever has to go testify before a court of law.”
Watch the full segment below.
POLITICS
the rich asshole Promised To Reshape America. He’s Already Told 1 Million Immigrants Who Had Legal Protections To Get Out.
They built lives in the U.S. with the government’s OK, and now they face an uncertain future.
WASHINGTON ― From the day he launched his presidential campaign, Donald the rich asshole has made it pretty clear what he wants America to look like. He doesn’t want Mexico’s “bad people,” immigrants from countries he did or did not describe as “shithole nations,” or refugees he says are a “Trojan horse” seeking to do Americans harm.
And he’s made some progress in carrying out that vision. the rich asshole has moved to terminate temporary protections for more than a million people, effectively telling a population the size of Rhode Island to either leave the country or face deportation. He’s looking to make it harder for asylum-seekers to find refuge in the U.S. And Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested more than 140,000 immigrants last fiscal year, while building up a force that will aim to detain tens of thousands more.
the rich asshole’s latest efforts to curb immigration came on Friday, when the Department of Homeland Security announced it will end temporary protected status, or TPS, for immigrants from Honduras. That means 57,000 Hondurans who found refuge in the U.S. after Hurricane Mitch wrecked their country in 1998 will have to leave or find another legal status by 2020.
The move didn’t come as a surprise. In the past year, the rich asshole administration has done the same for about 200,000 TPS holders from El Salvador, 46,000 from Haiti, 9,000 from Nepal, 2,500 from Nicaragua and 1,000 from Sudan, and for 4,000 Liberians who were in the U.S. on another type of temporary visa. The administration has effectively decimated TPS, announcing plans to terminate its protections for about 98 percent of current recipients, based on the argument that conditions in their native countries have improved.
the rich asshole also put the futures of some 690,000 undocumented young people who came to the U.S. as children in jeopardy when he terminated the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program last fall. The president argued he was forced to end the DACA program because it was unconstitutional and said lawmakers should instead create a legal solution for these Dreamers, as they’re known. But those efforts failed ― in part when the rich asshole demanded major concessions in exchange ― and Dreamers remain in a precarious position. They’re currently safe because court rulings have kept DACA running in part, but that could change, and they could yet again risk losing protections that have let them live and work without fear.
That’s more than a million people in total who have been living and working legally in the U.S. who, thanks to the rich asshole, now face an uncertain future, one in which they may be driven out of the workforce, ripped away from their families and sent back to countries ― some of them dangerous ― that they haven’t seen in years.
If they stay without authorization, TPS and DACA recipients could be caught up in a deportation system that is increasingly sweeping up people without criminal records. The rich asshole administration has said repeatedly that no one is exempt from enforcement and that it won’t look the other way if it finds another undocumented immigrant while looking for one of its targets. About 17 percent of the people deported from the interior of the country last year were noncriminals, a massive jump from the year before, when people without criminal convictions made up 8 percent of the removals from the interior.
As the rich asshole administration works to expel immigrants from the U.S., it is working to make it harder for new immigrants to enter the country.
During the presidential campaign, the rich asshole said that he wanted to temporarily ban all Muslims from entering the country. He didn’t do that, exactly, but did order a string of travel bans that targeted immigrants from several Muslim-majority nations. Although courts blocked large parts of the bans, other vetting measures have contributed to dramatically lower immigration levels from those countries.
The president singled out Syrian refugees and tried in his first travel ban to indefinitely shut down resettlement of Syrians into the U.S. That, too, was blocked, but Syrian refugee admission numbers are miniscule. Only 11 Syrian refugees came to the U.S. from January to the end of March.
Refugee admissions in general have dropped dramatically, all while the world is facing the largest refugee crisis since World War II, with many people displaced by wars that the U.S. plays a role in. In the rich asshole’s first year in office, the U.S. admitted 53,700 refugees, down from 85,000 the year before and less than half of the number set for the year by former President Barack Obama before he left office.
This fiscal year, the numbers are even more stark. The U.S. admitted only 10,500 refugees in the first six months, which means it’s unlikely to even reach the ceiling of 45,000 set for the year ― which was already 10,000 less than the previous year, and 40,000 less than the one before that.
He would exclude more immigrants if he could. “They’re not sending their finest,” he said Friday of migrants apprehended at the border. “That I can tell you. We’re getting some real beauties in here.”
the rich asshole wants to end the diversity visa lottery, which allows many people from African countries to move to the U.S., and to limit family-based migration, which he derisively refers to as “chain migration.” He is also seeking policy changes that would allow the government to detain and deport more people who seek asylum at the border, rather than releasing them into the U.S. while their cases are being heard.
This is our home. We’re going to fight as much as possible to stay here.Greisa Martinez Rosas, executive director of the advocacy group United We Dream
In sum, the trend is to restrict immigration.
“The rich asshole administration has been very consistent. Wherever it has discretion about a group of people or a program, it tends to err on the more restrictive side,” said Randy Capps of the nonpartisan think tank Migration Policy Institute.
To immigration activists, the rich asshole’s goals are pretty obvious.
“The jig was up after his comments about shithole countries,” said Greisa Martinez Rosas, a Dreamer with DACA status and executive director of the advocacy group United We Dream. “There’s no mincing of his words, and that’s why we’re not mincing ours. He’s not only anti-immigrant, but he’s a threat to people of color in this country.”
But it’s unclear whether that’s what Americans actually want. Forty-one percent of Americans approve of the rich asshole’s handling of immigration, versus 52 percent who do not, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released in April. There’s widespread support among voters for giving legal status to Dreamers who benefit from DACA, although so far it hasn’t translated to any action from Congress.
“I don’t think a the rich asshole rally represents the majority of Americans on the question of immigration,” said Ali Noorani, executive director of the advocacy group National Immigration Forum. “Yes, people have serious questions about the issue but I’m not sure they like the way the rich asshole is answering those questions.”
In addition, Noorani says, now that the rich asshole is following through on campaign promises on immigration, many people experience direct effects on their businesses and communities and it changes their opinion. And there’s only so much the rich asshole can do. The demographic trends of the country would be nearly impossible to stop, especially without major changes to legal immigration that would require congressional action. The Senate has rejected the president’s immigration policy platform, which would have included legal protections for DACA-eligible immigrants but also restricted legal immigration pathways and made it easier to reject people who request asylum.
Terminating DACA and TPS wouldn’t guarantee all of those individuals would leave the country, either. Even without legal protections, both Dreamers and TPS holders might stay in the U.S. because they have built lives here, or because they believe their native country is too dangerous, even if Homeland Security doesn’t.
“This is our home,” Martinez Rosas said. “We’re going to fight as much as possible to stay here.”
Mueller probe might have to ‘go dark’ during midterm elections under political pressure: report
Robert Mueller (cnn.com)
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The Mueller probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election and associated crimes may have to “go dark” during the mid-term elections or risk being shut down entirely, the Wall Street Journal reports.
“Though Mr. Mueller doesn’t face any specific legal deadline, the fall midterms amount to a political one,” the paper reported, citing unnamed prosecutors and politicians. “He will reach a point this summer when Justice Department habits dictate he would have to go dark so he doesn’t appear to be trying to sway voters’ decisions, which would be at odds with Justice Department guidelines for prosecutors.”
The idea is that news bombshells or further indictments could be seen as interfering in the campaign—like former FBI director James Comey did in 2016 when he broke news about a laptop with some of Hillary Clinton’s deleted emails just 11 days before polls opened.
“Any action by Mr. Mueller that implicates or exonerates some rich asshole or his associates in working with Russia or obstructing justice could go a long way to determining whether Democrats take control of one or both houses of Congress,” the report said.
Then again, these sources were citing “norms,” and if we’ve learned anything we’ve learned during this the rich asshole era it may be that we’re “post-norm.”
Read the full story here.
POLITICS
Giuliani, Conway Leave Open Possibility Of the rich asshole Hush Money To Other Women
“I have no knowledge of that, but I would think if it was necessary, yes,” Giuliani said.
Advisers to President some rich asshole declined on Sunday to rule out that women other than porn star Stormy Daniels received money to keep silent about alleged affairs with the businessman-turned-politician.
Rudy Giuliani, who recently joined the president’s legal team, said he was unaware of any other such payments brokered by the rich asshole attorney Michael Cohen, but he left a wide door open for them.
“I have no knowledge of that, but I would think if it was necessary, yes,” Giuliani told George Stephanopoulos in an interview on ABC’s “This Week” about the possibility.
Speaking on CNN’s “State of the Union,” White House counselor Kellyanne Conway said she didn’t personally know about payments other than the one to Daniels, though she added an important caveat.
If such payments were made, “They didn’t cross my desk as campaign manager” in the 2016 election, Conway told Jake Tapper.
Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, has said she had an affair with the rich asshole in 2006, after he’d married his wife Melania and a son was born to the couple. Daniels signed a nondisclosure agreement regarding the alleged affair and accepted $130,000 from Cohen just before the rich asshole won the White House. the rich asshole has denied the affair occurred.
Giuliani, the former New York City mayor, created a controversy for the president last week when he acknowledged publicly that the rich asshole reimbursed Cohen for the payment. the rich asshole had previously denied knowing about the hush money, though Conway now is saying he meant that he was unaware of the payment when it occurred.
The payment may have comprised an illegal campaign donation if Cohen made it in order to protect the rich asshole’s campaign from scandal.
Giuliani has claimed that the payment was made to Daniels not for the sake of the rich asshole’s candidacy but to shield his family from adverse and hurtful publicity. Giuliani has called the payment a personal matter rather than a political one for the president.
As for similar potential payments to women, Giuliani said Cohen would have made them as someone who handled business for the rich asshole.
“He made payments for the president,” Giuliani said. “He conducted business for the president.”
‘My eyes cannot roll back far enough in my head’: MSNBC panel accuses Sarah Huckabee Sanders of ‘playing woman card’ to defend ‘first female water-boarder’
Michelle Goldberg and Noelle Nikpour on MSNBC/Screenshot
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some rich asshole’s pick to lead the CIA has reportedly sought to withdraw her nomination fearing a confirmation hearing focused on her involvement in torture at CIA black sites.
The White House is pushing back by accusing those who don’t support the water-board boss of sexist. Sarah Huckabee Sanders called those who oppose her hypocrites in a snarky Saturday tweet.
“There is no one more qualified to be the first woman to lead the CIA than 30+ year CIA veteran Gina Haspel. Any Democrat who claims to support women’s empowerment and our national security but opposes her nomination is a total hypocrite,” Sanders tweeted.
This inspired a fierce debate over whether supporting a woman who oversaw torture for a top position made you a good feminist.
Republican strategist Noelle Nikpour said that Sanders was playing the “woman card” and that this was good.
“I like the tweet because it’s pro woman,” she said. It’s pro-woman—it is.”
New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg was not having it.
“I’m sorry but my eyes cannot roll back far enough in my head,” she said. “The idea that there is no feminist in America who is rooting for the first female water-boarder… the idea that they’re going to play the woman card, the most sexist administration in modern history.”
IT’s a card, it’s a hard—it’s not serious,” said journalist Bobby Ghosh.
Former CIA operative and independent presidential candidate Evan McMullin said that Haspel may be the best hope those who fear the rich asshole have—as a careerist in the agency, he thinks she is less likely to allow it to be politicized and possibly used to abuse the rich asshole’s enemies.
“We run a risk—if she is not the pick, who is it?” he asked. “Is it somebody that’s more political? Is it somebody that politicizes the agency, which is very scary.”
Watch the exchange below.
the rich asshole hasn’t called Waffle House hero despite Sarah Sanders’ promise
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Two weeks later, the rich asshole refuses to recognize the black American who stopped a white mass shooter.
It has been two weeks since James Shaw, Jr. heroically risked his life to stop a mass shooting. But even after a promise from the White House, the rich asshole has still not contacted him.
Earlier this week, reporter April Ryan called the rich asshole out for praising other heroes while ignoring Shaw, an African American man who disarmed the shooter who killed four people at a Waffle House in Tennessee on April 22.
“Is the President himself going to reach out to him? Will he come to the White House?” Ryan asked Sanders on Tuesday.
“My understanding is that there has been an outreach effort to bring him here to the White House,” Sanders replied.
But by the end of the week, the rich asshole still had not contacted Shaw. On Friday night, CNN’s Van Jones asked Shaw if the rich asshole had called him.
“At this time, I haven’t heard anything,” Shaw said, while also allowing that he might have missed a call. He added that his act was not done for recognition, but “to save my own life.”
Despite Shaw’s gracious allowance, it is extremely unlikely that the White House could try and fail to contact someone for two solid weeks, and even more unlikely that Shaw would see no evidence of an unsuccessful attempt.
As Ryan pointed out, the rich asshole has praised others who have acted heroically in a crisis, and even hosted some at the White House this past week. But Shaw, whose heroism doesn’t fit the NRA narrative, has been snubbed by the rich asshole for two weeks now.
Even after Sanders herself praised Shaw from the podium the day after the shooting, the rich asshole has remained silent. At a speech to the NRA Saturday, the rich asshole again failed to mention Shaw, instead calling for more guns.
And now, even after Sanders promised that the rich asshole would be inviting Shaw to the White House, the rich asshole has failed to contact him.
The reasons for the rich asshole’s silence are as clear as they are shameful. The Waffle House shooting doesn’t fit the NRA’s version of reality, and James Shaw Jr.’s heroism doesn’t fit the racist worldview of the rich asshole or his base.
Republican House Armed Service chair warns the rich asshole against leaving Iran deal
President some rich asshole (AFP/File / Olivier Douliery)
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The Republican leader of the U.S. House Armed Services Committee said President the rich asshole should not walk away from the Iran nuclear deal.
President some rich asshole is facing a May 12 deadline on whether to re-impose sanctions against Iran. Texas Congressman Mac Thornberry said on Fox News Sunday it would be a mistake for the rich asshole to scuttle the nuclear accord reached with Tehran. “I would counsel against it,” he said.
As Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Thornberry is considered a key Republican voice on national security issues. Thornberry said that while he was opposed to the deal when it was signed by the Obama Administration in 2015, exiting the agreement now would erode Washington’s leverage against Tehran.
“I thought it was a bad deal,” he said. “But the key question is, ok, what happens next if the U.S. pulls out? Does Iran kick out those inspectors so we lose the visibility we have?”
the rich asshole has signaled he may tear up the 2015 deal and re-impose sanctions later this month. the rich asshole Administration officials have said the nuclear accord fails to address Iran’s ballistic missile program and will allow Tehran to rebuild its nuclear program after some of its provisions expire.
Thornberry said that the rich asshole should work with European allies to address these shortcomings in the accord. But scuttling the deal, he said, would take pressure off Iran by dividing Washington from its allies.
“The Europeans are not going to re-impose sanctions so where does that leave us and Iran?” he said.
WATCH: CNN host flinches as GOP strategist Rick Wilson brutally attacks Kellyanne Conway’s habit of lying
Rick Wilson, Brian Stelter on CNN
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Appearing on CNN on Sunday afternoon, GOP strategist and vocal the rich asshole critic, Rick Wilson unpacked White House adviser Kellyanne Conway’s contentious interview with the network’s Jake Tapper, saying there is nothing she loves more than to lie to the public and the press.
Sitting on a panel discussing Conway’s Sunday morning bobbing and weaving over accusations that President some rich asshole has continually lied about hush money payoffs to adult film star Stormy Daniels by his attorney, Wilson cut to the chase while also noting Conway seemed to be slowly backing away from the rich asshole’s ever-evolving payoff timeline.
“Kellyanne was doing some walk-back this morning and she was trying to insulate herself a little bit,” Wilson began before going in for the kill.
“Look, this is a woman who likes lies like a fat kid loves cake,” he continued as others on the panel winced. “She has absolutely no problem being the most mendacious and untruthful person on television. It is to the point where it is making her uncomfortable when she is saying, ‘I don’t know about that stuff,’ and you know there is a bigger issue below the surface here.”
“It’s like a filth iceberg, and there is a lot beneath it that she is aware of, but doesn’t want to get tagged with knowing about,” he added. “She’s the queen of that happy talk thing for him [the rich asshole] and the fact that she is putting daylight between herself and the president on this is very interesting to me.”
You can watch the video below via CNN:
POLITICS
Kellyanne Conway Claims the rich asshole Didn’t Lie About Stormy Daniels Hush Money
the rich asshole’s team is straining to explain his comments last month that he didn’t know about the payment to the porn star.
President some rich asshole told reporters aboard Air Force One last month that he didn’t know about a $130,000 payment made by his lawyer, Michael Cohen, to porn star Stormy Daniels weeks before the 2016 election. That statement was contradicted last week by another the rich asshole attorney, Rudy Giuliani, who said the president had reimbursed Cohen for the expense.
Speaking on CNN on Sunday, White House counselor Kellyanne Conway claimed there’s an explanation for that discrepancy: the rich asshole wasn’t telling reporters he didn’t know about the payment. He was saying he didn’t know about it when it was made.
“In speaking with the president just yesterday, when the president said “No” on Air Force One, he was talking about he didn’t know when the payment occurred,” Conway told Jake Tapper. “It was a very fast-moving exchange… He’s saying he didn’t know about when the payment occurred. He found out about it after the fact.”
In the Air Force One exchange, the rich asshole was asked, “Did you know about the $130,000 payment to Stormy Daniels?” He responded, “No. No. What else?”
He was then asked, “Do you know where he [Cohen] got the money to make that payment?”
the rich asshole responded, “No. I don’t know.”
As Tapper noted in his interview with Conway, the president was speaking in the present tense, claiming ignorance.
“That’s present tense,” Tapper said. “But he did know.”
Conway responded by referring Tapper to the president’s Twitter feed.
“You have to look at president’s three tweets,” Conway said. “I’m going to relay to you what the president has told me, which is the best I can do. He didn’t know it at the time the payment occurred.”
Daniels has said she had an affair with the rich asshole in 2006 after meeting him at a celebrity golf tournament. She signed a nondisclosure agreement and accepted the $130,000 just before the rich asshole won the White House.
What the rich asshole knew about the payment to Daniels is significant because it could comprise an illegal campaign contribution, if Cohen made it in order to protect the rich asshole’s candidacy from a damaging news about an affair. the rich asshole has denied the affair with Daniels happened, and Giuliani claims the payment was made to protect the rich asshole’s family from an embarrassing story.
the rich asshole meets with Rudy Giuliani at golf club following calamitous Sunday morning interview: report
Former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani (left) and President some rich asshole (right). Image via Don Emmert/AFP.
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Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani was reportedly huddled with his client, President some rich asshole, at the rich asshole National Golf Club in Virginia on Sunday afternoon after appearing on ABC for a widely-panned morning show appearance.
During an interview on ABC’s This Week, Giuliani hinted that the rich asshole may have paid off multiple women over alleged affairs, suggested that the president might invoke his Fifth Amendment rights instead of speaking to special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, and insisted that the rich asshole could ignore a subpoena from the special counsel. Giuliani also noted that he was only “halfway” up to speed on legal matters facing his client.
Michael Avenatti, an attorney for adult film star Stormy Daniels, reacted in shock following the interview.
“It’s an absolute unmitigated disaster for Rudy Giuliani and the president,” Avenatti told the host. “It’s a train wreck. I can’t believe that that actually just happened. I mean, what we witnessed by Rudy Giuliani may be one of the worst TV appearances by any attorney on behalf of a client in modern times.”
Later in the afternoon, the White House pool report suggested that Giuliani was meeting with the rich asshole, but the White House refused to confirm the report.
“A tipster [says] the rich asshole is with his new personal attorney Rudy Giuliani. Pool sought confirmation nearly two hours ago from the White House, but has yet to receive it,” pool reporter Steven Nelson wrote.
Michael Flynn cites ‘family emergency’ and abruptly cancels campaign appearance for Montana GOP candidate
Michael Flynn (YouTube)
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Disgraced National Security Adviser Michael Flynn cited a “family emergency” on Sunday after he suddenly cancelled a campaign appearance.
The Associated Press reported on Sunday that Flynn backed out of a campaign event for Republican U.S. Senate candidate Troy Downing at the last minute.
In a video posted by Downing on Saturday, Flynn explained that an emergency was forcing him to cancel the appearance.
“I had a family emergency at the last minute and I just simple couldn’t make it,” the former the rich asshole staffer explained, adding that he “wholeheartedly” endorses Downing for Senate.
In December, Flynn pled guilty to “willfully and knowingly” making false statements to the FBI, a charge stemming from special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.
Watch the video below.
POLITICS
McCain Doesn’t Want the rich asshole Attending His Funeral: Reports
The White House has been asked to send Vice President Mike Pence instead.
Amid Sen. John McCain’s (R-Ariz.) battle with brain cancer, the 81-year-old reportedly wants President some rich asshole to stay away from his funeral.
Friends of the Vietnam war veteran and 2008 presidential candidate, who has had a rocky relationship with the rich asshole, asked the White House that they send Vice President Mike Pence instead, The New York Times and NBC News reported on Saturday.
The service is planned for Washington’s National Cathedral and will have eulogies read by former Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush, a source close to McCain told NBC News.
McCain has been battling an aggressive form of brain cancer since being diagnosed with the disease in July. He is recovering at his Sedona, Arizona, home after undergoing surgery for an intestinal infection last month.
“I don’t know how much longer I’ll be here,” McCain said in an excerpt released last week from his upcoming memoir, “The Restless Wave: Good Times, Just Causes, Great Fights, and other Appreciations.”
“Maybe I’ll be gone before you hear this,” he said in an audio recording of the excerpt. “My predicament is, well, rather unpredictable. But I’m prepared for either contingency, or at least I’m getting prepared.”
His son-in-law, Ben Domenech, reportedly said last week that McCain hugged him and asked him to “take care” of his daughter, Meghan. The couple married in November.
Grant Woods, McCain’s friend and former chief of staff, told the Times that though McCain is receiving a lot of visitors, no one is actually saying goodbye, given that the senator doesn’t like “overt sentimentality,” he said.
Former Vice President Joe Biden was among the recent visitors. The two men served together in the Senate, and McCain reportedly encouraged Biden to stay in politics. Biden, 75, has been rumored to be considering a run for the White House in 2020.
It’s no secret that McCain and the rich asshole have repeatedly butted heads, particularly in recent years.
In 2015, the rich asshole dismissed McCain’s heroism in the Vietnam War, saying he is “not a war hero” because he was “captured.” McCain, a Navy pilot, was repeatedly tortured during the more than five years he was held captive in North Vietnam. He said last fall that the rich asshole never apologized for his insulting remark.
McCain also famously shot down his own party’s attempt to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act last year. the rich asshole, who had pushed hard for the repeal bill, called McCain’s move “totally unexpected” and “honestly terrible.”
‘Michelle Wolf was right’: NYT writer trashes colleagues for creating and profiting off the ‘the rich asshole monster’
President some rich asshole, comedian Michelle Wolf -- (AFP/screenshot)
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In a scathing New York Times opinion piece, longtime columnist Maureen Dowd took her colleagues to the woodshed by highlighting — and agreeing with — criticism aimed at them at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner by comedian Michelle Wolf.
Lost in the shuffle of media discomfort over Wolf’s blistering portrayal of White House spokesperson Sarah Huckabee Sanders as a liar at the April 28th event, was the comedian’s devastating takedown of the press who obsessively boosted then-candidate some rich asshole for ratings and social media clicks.
According to Wolf, addressing the assembled Beltway press: “You guys are obsessed with the rich asshole. Did you used to date him? Because you pretend like you hate him, but I think you love him.”
“I think what no one in this room wants to admit is that the rich asshole has helped all of you. He couldn’t sell steaks or vodka or water or college or ties or Eric, but he has helped you,” she added. “He’s helped you sell your papers and your books and your TV. You helped create this monster, and now you’re profiting off of him. If you’re going to profit off of the rich asshole, you should at least give him some money, because he doesn’t have any.”
Columnist Dowd concurs, writing, “Michelle Wolf was right when she turned a gimlet eye on the media.”
“some rich asshole is damaging the country and civic discourse, and undermining the First Amendment. But this Batman cartoon villain with an uncanny gift for cliffhangers and lurid story lines is buoying journalism, giving us a reprieve while we figure out how to save ourselves in the digital age,” she wrote. “And he’s making journalists stars in a way they haven’t been since Watergate, inspiring documentaries and movies and helping them secure lucrative book and TV deals.”
“the rich asshole is an attention addict, and now he’s in a position to get all the attention in the world, as long as he keeps those sirens blaring. CNN has been on a constant Breaking News Alert for months,” she continued. “As we pat ourselves on the back, though, for the grueling hours and Pulitzer-quality scoops, we should remember one thing: Even if we vanished tomorrow, the rich asshole would probably end up in the same place.”
Dowd goes on to note, “the rich asshole’s game is keeping everyone, especially the press, riveted,” before quoting the rich asshole biographer Michael D’Antonio.
“He needs the excitement,” D’Antonio remarked. “Without the drama and the crisis and the powerful opponent, he’d be just another guy.”
You can read the whole piece here.
Doctors say the rich asshole’s VA is catastrophic failure: ‘Worst it’s ever been’
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the rich asshole has turned Veterans Affairs into an unending nightmare. And the people who fought for the country are the ones paying the highest price for his incompetence.
the rich asshole made it clear last Friday how little respect he has for the military when he attacked three war heroes. And new reporting on the disaster that the Department of Veterans Affairs has become makes it even more painfully obvious.
The New York Times documents the “chaos” that has engulfed the V.A. under the rich asshole, and particularly its medical system. As he has “plunged the department into turmoil,” doctors are burning out and veterans are being left behind.
After the rich asshole fired V.A. Secretary David Shulkin, he tried to install Dr. Ronny Jackson in his place. But that turned into a spectacular failure, as Jackson’s questionable past and lack of qualifications quickly scuttled his nomination.
Meanwhile, as the Times notes, “a string of departures at the highest level of the agency has left it adrift.”
Efforts in Congress to fix the health care system, known as Veterans Choice, have been fitful for years. And the interminable wait times veterans have experienced trying to access care have been a massive black mark against the agency.
None of that looks to improve any time soon. “You’ve got a huge vacuum of leadership,” former V.A. Secretary Robert McDonald told the Times.
And John Hoellwarth, a spokesperson for AMVETS, added that the V.A. “for months has been hemorrhaging career officials at an alarming rate.” He pointed out that no amount of spin can make that fact look good.
“I’ve never known the enthusiastic mass exodus of an organization’s most knowledgeable and experienced personnel to be an indication that all is well.”
In addition, medical providers at the V.A. confirm that troubling view, based on their first-hand experiences.
“I’ve been doing this 30 years, and it’s the worst it’s ever been,” said Dr. Murray Altose, former chief of staff at the V.A. hospital in Cleveland. And he noted that younger staffers are especially concerned that the upheaval could hit close to home.
“They don’t know if they have a future here.”
That’s hardly a mindset to ensure a well-run agency. And veterans — people who put their lives on the line for the country — bear the brunt of it.
“The department planned to announce a major reorganization of its health care system administration this week, designed to avoid failures in care that have incited repeated scandals in the hospital system,” the Times notes.
“It did not happen.”
Instead, some political appointees within the V.A. seem more focused on imitating the rich asshole. They “hold meetings without career staff members and talk openly about purging anyone they see as friendly” to Shulkin. Deputy Secretary Thomas G. Bowman has been “isolated” by the rich asshole’s appointees, who want to drive him out much like they did Shulkin.
Yet even among all of this petty scheming and neglect of their actual mission, agency spokesperson Curt Cashour insisted to the Times that everything was just fine.
Under the rich asshole, “the V.A. has had its most productive year in decades,” Cashour said in a statement. He laid blame for the negative press on the “V.A.’s Washington bureaucracy.” And he sneered at “employees who were wedded to the status quo and not on board with this administration’s policies.”
But groups like AMVETS and doctors like Altose see it quite differently. As does Dr. Neil Elkin, a primary care physician who recently left the Ukiah Veterans Affairs Outpatient Clinic in Northern California.
“The V.A. seems like a jumbo jet over the Atlantic without a pilot right now,” he said. “There is chaos in the cockpit, and there is chaos in the cabin, too.”
the rich asshole has never shown anything even approaching respect for veterans or the military. He turned a solemn ceremony into an occasion for jokes and grandiosity. He’s threatened their pay, plunging families into anxiety. And he can barely pretend to care when troops are missing or killed.
Furthermore, the four American soldiers killed in an ambush in Niger provided perhaps the most horrifying example of the rich asshole’s inadequacy as commander in chief.
Yet he still deemed it appropriate to demand a military parade, ostensibly to in part honor him.
Yet as his past and the Department of Veterans Affairs’ present clearly prove, he deserves nothing of the kind.
MSNBC panel dissolves in laughter — and then destroys Giuliani’s ‘buffoonish’ ABC interview
From top to right: Joy Reid, Eric Boehlert, Jonathan Capehart, Jennifer Rubin, Michelle Bernard -- screenshot
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Watching clips from an ABC interview with President the rich asshole’s latest legal advisor, Rudy Giuliani, the panel on MSNBC’s AM Joy were positively agog that the former New York City mayor performed even more poorly than he did on previous interviews this past week — of which there are many.
After sharing a few choice moments of Giuliani’s disastrous interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos — which Stormy Daniels’ attorney Michael Avenatti called “an unmitigated disaster” — journalist Eric Boehlert was the first to dig in as the entire panel around him burst into laughter.
“He’s had quite a week, right?” the smirking Boehlert offered. ” I mean, you know, Rudy Giuliani is an attorney in the way Michael Cohen is an attorney. So the rich asshole clearly hired his mini-me, right?”
“Rudy has become this buffoon and he’s a liar,” he continued. “The idea he’s filing legal briefs in D.C. is a joke — he hasn’t been in a courtroom in 30 years. He’s basically like the communications director for impeachment and he’s just kind of out there running interference.”
Conservative writer Jennifer Rubin was beside herself with laughter as she sarcastically ticked off what Giuliani appears to be trying to do.
“There’s one of several explanations,” she began. “One, he’s a plant from Mueller. Two, he’s in declining mental state. Three, he wants to get fired. Four, he wants the rich asshole to get fired. Or five, some combination thereof … He also said, by the way he is just learning the facts. If you are just learning the facts, what are you doing on national TV?”
“He has no idea what campaign finance law is like,” she continued. “He has no idea what the Constitution requires in this case. He is now saying things like the president doesn’t have to respond to a subpoena — which clearly he does. He is really off the wall.”
“Jennifer just said this is a choice between amusing and horrifying,” columnist Jonathan Capehart interjected. “And I would like to say it is horrifyingly amusing. The reason why Giuliani is on television now is because the field has been left wide open for Stormy Daniels and, by extension, Michael Avenatti.”
“Michael Avenatti, her attorney, has been all over television, defending his client, supporting his client,” Capehart explained. “He’s been at every show, every network, you know, just pounding away at the fact that she has a story to tell and the president is a liar. He makes like outlandish predictions on these shows and then, lo and behold, days later something happens that proves him right.”
Watch the video below via MSNBC:
the rich asshole paid a foreign firm to dig up personal dirt on Obama aides
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Nothing is off-limits for the rich asshole and his administration — not even the personal lives of officials in past administrations.
the rich asshole’s obsession with undoing President Barack Obama’s Iran nuclear deal reached a frightening new level recently. He reportedly hired a private Israeli intelligence firm to look into the personal lives of Obama administration figures.
The UK Guardian’s Observer magazine reports that in May 2017, the rich asshole’s White House paid the investigators hired to dig up dirt on Obama-era national security aides Ben Rhodes and Colin Kahl.
According to the Observer, “investigators … were told to dig into the personal lives and political careers of Rhodes, a former deputy national security adviser for strategic communications, and Kahl, a national security adviser to the former vice-president Joe Biden.”
The paper notes that “they were looking at personal relationships, any involvement with Iran-friendly lobbyists, and if they had benefited personally or politically from the peace deal.”
The Observer report doesn’t name the firm. But reporter Laura Rozen confirmed that Kahl’s wife was approached by a fake firm with the same name as one used by Black Cube, the agency that Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein hired to discredit the multiple women accusing him of sexual misconduct and abuse.
Rhodes called the plot “chillingly authoritarian” in comments to The Observer. He slammed the rich asshole on Twitter, as well.
“This is not behavior that should be acceptable in a democracy. It is thuggish, mean-spirited, and casts a chilling and threatening cloud over public service that risks extending far beyond me and [Kahl],” Rhodes wrote.
This revelation comes as the rich asshole has been proven a liar once again, by his own attorney. Rudy Giuliani made it clear that the rich asshole did in fact know about the hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels.
It’s a sick irony that while the rich asshole tries to play the victim, he specifically targeted the personal lives of former American public servants.
There is no indication that the rich asshole’s dirty tricks operation met with any success at all. But it’s telling that he assumed the personal histories of people he didn’t even know would yield compromising information.
Furthermore, the rich asshole’s tactics are reminiscent of repressive police states like the former East Germany. They resemble nothing that most Americans would associate with our democracy.
the rich asshole’s lying is disturbing. But his despotic impulses are downright dangerous.
EPA clamping down on public records requests related to Scott Pruitt
Pruitt's political appointees screen documents for nearly all FOIA requests.
Political appointees at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) are screening public records requests related to administrator Scott Pruitt at an alarming rate, slowing the release of documents under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), according to internal emails obtained by POLITICO.
Pruitt’s political appointees review documents collected for nearly all FOIA requests. Past administrations gave political aides a similar courtesy, but experts told POLITICO the level of vetting has increased markedly in the rich asshole administration.
These so-called “awareness reviews” or “senior management reviews” also occurred under the Obama administration when staff thought the requested information would generate news. But now, the EPA chief of Staff Ryan Jackson and other appointees request to review any and all information related to Pruitt.
Emails also showed that political aides reprimand career staff for releasing documents about Pruitt before they’ve screened the information first.
“This does look like the most burdensome review process that I’ve seen documented,” Director of the FOIA Project for George Washington University’s National Security Archive Nate Jones told POLITICO.
The report comes as the EPA faces accusations of carrying out Pruitt’s agenda in secret. Employees reportedly have had to leave cell phones behind when they meet with the EPA administrator. Pruitt has also spent thousands to install a secure, soundproof phone booth in his office.
The EPA declines to provide information about Pruitt’s public appearances beforehand, and would only released detailed schedules when pressed by lawsuits. As a result, FOIA requests have increased due to the agency’s secrecy.
In February, POLITICO reported that Pruitt’s office released FOIA requests at a lower rate than the rest of the EPA.
Mueller critic Jonathan Turley says the rich asshole may be cooked: ‘It is possible that a porn star can take down a president’
Jonathan Turley appears on CBS (screen grab)
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George Washington University Law professor Jonathan Turley, a frequent critic of special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, asserted on Sunday that adult film star Stormy Daniels may eventually force the President some rich asshole out of office.
“The danger here is that the Stormy Daniels matter could supply the obstruction case [against the rich asshole], which has so far evaded Robert Mueller,” Turley explained during an interview on Face the Nation. “I don’t think that the obstruction case or collusion case that Mueller has been pursuing has really materialized as far as we can see into a serious threat against the president.”
“But an obstruction case would be easier with Stormy Daniels,” he continued. “Even though [the rich asshole attorney Rudy Giuliani] says this is a weak case under federal election laws, the fact is that it is possible to violate the federal election laws, whether it’s a loan or a gift.”
According to Turley, the risk for the rich asshole comes if he influences witnesses, withholds documents or urges people to give false information in the case.
“All of that would be an easier obstruction case,” he explained. “Because you don’t have all the use of presidential authority that you have, for example, firing [former FBI Director] James Comey. That’s tough because he’s using an inherent [presidential] power.”
“That falls away with Stormy Daniels,” Turley said. “It is possible that a porn star could take down a president if the president’s not cautious.”
Watch the video below from CBS.
the rich asshole Opened Bears Ears Monument To Mining, So We Went To Stake A Claim
Obtaining mineral rights is easy through America’s antiquated system. Doing anything with them is hard.
SAN JUAN COUNTY, Utah — Forty miles as the crow flies west of Blanding, Utah, just up the road from the former uranium boomtown of Fry Canyon and a dirt airstrip, is a parcel of federal land historically valued for its radioactive metal and other hardrock minerals.
The tracks of mule deer and cattle criss-cross a maze of red rock, cacti and parched-looking shrubs. The only signs of human life are the contrails from airlines overhead and the sound of an occasional car buzzing along State Route 95.
Here is where I decided to stake my claim, the first step a prospector takes to mine public lands.
For a year, this remote and magnificent desert landscape was part of Bears Ears National Monument and off-limits to new mining claims. That changed in December when President some rich asshole reduced the 1.35 million-acre monument by 85 percent. The more stringent protections the Obama-era monument designation afforded officially lifted in early February, leaving sites like this once again open for business. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) braced for a potential influx of new claims.
The process of staking a claim has changed little since the days of Manifest Destiny. It’s still governed by the General Mining Act of 1872, which itself is based on an acquisition system prospectors used around the time of California’s Gold Rush. You read that right: The law our entire federal mining system is based on is almost exactly the same as it was 146 years ago.
Here’s how it works: A prospector goes out on public land, pickax, gold pan or, preferably, some more advanced technology in hand, and locates a valuable mineral. He or she drives a stake in the ground and erects posts or rock piles at each corner of the parcel they want to call dibs on. The prospector writes a name, address and information about the claim on a piece of paper, stuffs it in a tin can or plastic bag attached to one of the corner markers, and then files a notice with Uncle Sam, for the bargain price of just $212 for a 20-acre parcel.
And then, voila! The prospector has the rights to the valuable hard-rock minerals contained therein. This bizarrely outdated system allows not only U.S. citizens but foreign companies to extract minerals from public lands and turn a profit without ever paying a dime in royalties to the federal government.
My goal in staking my own claim was simple. While I had no intention of launching a new career in the extractive mineral industry, I wanted to see how easy it really was to declare part of an area so recently protected from new mining as my very own, and the implications that might have for an archaeologically rich landscape considered sacred to many Native Americans.
In the days after the rich asshole officially lifted protections on more than 2 million acres of Bears Ears and nearby Grand Staircase-Escalante monuments, I found myself scouring the web for mining data.
Using a website called “The Diggings,” a user-friendly resource of mining claims that I can only guess was developed out of a hatred for the Bureau of Land Management’s Y2K-era online database, I zeroed in on claims that are now inactive because, for whatever reason, the claimant failed to pay the annual maintenance fee. I figured a parcel where someone had previously made a discovery was as good a place as any for a rookie to start.
Approximately one-third of the acres removed from Bears Ears are wilderness or wilderness study areas and remain off-limits to claims. Finding a parcel that was previously part of Bears Ears, did not have an active claim and was not otherwise restricted to mining proved to be a bit of a challenge.
Cross-referencing information to the BLM’s database, I identified three promising sites: one in Valley of the Gods that uranium miners staked in 1984 and abandoned less than four months later; another, which appeared to be a gold claim, staked in 1984 in the Manti-La Sal National Forest and forfeited five years later; and a parcel out near Fry Canyon — the one I ultimately settled on — where numerous parties, mostly uranium mining companies, had staked dozens of claims between 1948 and 2007.
And then it was off to southern Utah.
It was a little before noon on a sunny day in late March when I met up with freelance photographer Kim Raff outside Blanding’s quaint little visitor’s center. After a last-minute supply run to the local hardware store, we piled gear into a rental SUV.
The one-hour drive to the claim site, which I’d scoped out the day before, took us up and over Comb Ridge, an ancient sandstone monocline that runs for some 80 miles, and past the pair of towering buttes for which Bears Ears is named. After dipping south of Natural Bridges National Monument and winding between several towering mesas, Route 95 swings past the shuttered Fry Canyon Lodge, once a remote backcountry inn, gas station and RV park. A sign out front reads: “Closed. Private Property.” Somewhere over the ridge behind the dilapidated structure is the idle Daneros uranium mine, located just outside the former monument boundary.
Near mile marker 69, I parked along the shoulder, careful not to crush delicate cacti. There were no other cars in sight. I threw some jerky, water and other supplies in a backpack, hauled two 4-foot-long wooden posts over my shoulder, grabbed a shovel and headed toward the rocky cliff that zigzags parallel to the road. In a small clearing not far from the highway, I dug a shallow hole and dropped in the first post, stacking stones around the base so it wouldn’t topple over, as the BLM recommends.
Using a range finder and handy GPS phone application, Raff and I carefully plotted the distance between each corner as we erected the three other posts. The two southern markers were placed a few hundred feet up the rocky hillside and the climb provided sweeping views of White Canyon, Found Mesa and far-off Cheese Box Butte.
I was fairly confident we’d staked a near-perfect 20-acre rectangle. I still had to name it though. We settled on “Cheese Box Vista Mine,” a tribute to a distinctive rock formation that had recently been cut from the protected site.
I scrawled my information on the back of a page from a mining packet I’d been given earlier in the week at the BLM office in Monticello, Utah, and attached the notice to the northeast corner post. Fearing my tape job might not hold up in inclement weather, I put a second note inside a plastic container I attached to the marker.
I had no gold nuggets or uranium ore to show for the effort. Nonetheless, it felt like successful prospecting. I ultimately decided against filling out the paperwork with BLM to actually move forward on a claim, since the story was less about mining than the archaic process that allows pretty much anyone to do it. Besides, as easy as it is to obtain one, a claim on its own gets you very little.
The claim doesn’t mean you own the land, nor does it grant you permission to develop a mine. The purpose, rather, is to establish priority over any other prospectors who might be after what’s in that ground. But anything beyond panning in a creek or poking around in the dirt with a pickax requires time and money that only serious miners ― those convinced they can turn a profit ― are likely to spend.
“It’s easy to get mineral rights; it’s hard to do any kind of mining,” said Tyler Hall, a jewelry store owner in Monticello who has a mining claim just east of Blanding. “And it’s extremely hard to use any kind of equipment.”
When I spoke with him, Hall said he had been trying for the better part of a year to obtain a permit that would allow him to take tourists panning for gold. The hoops he’s had to jump through are “ginormous,” Hall said.
Hall argues that mining too often gets a bad rap. While the mining law hasn’t changed, there’s been a shift in mentality, from simply encouraging people to make a living to focusing on environmental protection and wildlife resources.
“This idea that mining is going to destroy this heritage and land is just not true,” he said. “I think it’s a good thing. I don’t want any of that to be lost.”
The General Mining Act of 1872, which President Ulysses S. Grant signed into law, sought to incentivize prospecting and spur economic development in the West. The West is now thoroughly developed, but the law remains on the books, with only minor amendments.
Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.) is among those who argue it’s time to bring the law into the 21st century. He’s repeatedly introduced legislation to overhaul what he’s called an “antiquated sweetheart deal” for mining companies. While the law helped grow America, it “did nothing to protect the environment and did nothing to require mines to clean up the mess,” he said back in 2015, a few months after the devastating Gold King mine spill in Colorado.
Unlike the coal, oil and gas industries, which pay a 12.5 percent royalty on fossil fuels they extract from federal land, hardrock miners pay nothing to produce gold, silver, platinum or uranium. Several attempts to overhaul the law in recent years have failed, in part thanks to former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), a fierce ally of the mining industry who fought to block establishing royalty rates.
Jim Allen, a natural resources lawyer in Tucson, Arizona, who represents numerous mining companies, told HuffPost that the mining law is “written backwards from how things are done today.” Historically, claims were staked after a discovery was made. But, as Allen put it, “the days of locating an ore deposit by finding a vein of ore on the surface, and following it into the earth, are gone.” Prospectors with pickaxes have been replaced by geophysicists with technology that can identify potential deposits thousands of feet deep. Today, the discovery of a valuable mineral — necessary for a claim to be valid — often comes after a miner stakes the ground and files a location notice.
BLM’s decisions to greenlight mining operations hinge on a claimant’s ability to prove a discovery was made and “show a reasonable prospect of making a profit from the sale of minerals.” Without that, a person leaves themselves prone to having their mineral rights seized by another party, which is commonly known as “claim-jumping.”
Allen added that the mining law is rooted in a policy of developing resources and based on the 19th-century notion that people really want land because they are planning to open mines. But, he said, “there are many reasons why that policy of free disposition may not serve the nation’s interests today.”
The mining companies Allen represents wouldn’t lose much sleep if the 1872 law were rescinded or reformed, he said ― as long as its replacement doesn’t require royalties.
In 2017, an estimated $75.2 billion worth of minerals were produced in the U.S. — up 6 percent from the previous year. And the rich asshole administration has prioritized boosting domestic production of minerals it has identified as “critical” to the economic and national security. A draft list of 35 m nerals includes both uranium and vanadium, a malleable metal also found in the White Canyon area of southeastern Utah.
When the rich asshole signed his executive order last year directing Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to review more than two dozen national monument designations, he boasted that he was ending “another egregious abuse of federal power” and opening up the protected area to “tremendously positive things.”
Many expected that meant mining and drilling. And recent media reports have done little to allay environmentalists fears. The Washington Post uncovered a lobbying campaign from uranium company Energy Fuels to shrink the monument. And The New York Times obtained emails that show potential future oil extraction played a central role in the decision.
The administration maintains that the rollback was not about energy. “I’m a geologist,” Zinke said at a congressional budget hearing earlier this month. “I can assure you that oil and gas in Bears Ears was not part of my decision matrix. ... And there is no proposal that I’ve seen to mine uranium in the former area of Bears Ears.”
The Utah Department of Natural Resources has said the original monument has “very little energy potential” and “minimal” potential for uranium production. But officials in San Juan County, where the monument is located, see things quite differently.
“The area in and around Bears Ears is rich in oil, gas, coal, and uranium deposits,” the county wrote in a recent court filing, according to the Salt Lake Tribune. The county is looking to intervene in one of several lawsuits that tribes and environmental groups have brought against the rich asshole administration in an effort to block the monument rollbacks.
As of April 27, only one new claim on land cut from Bears Ears had been recorded with the local BLM office. It was staked by two public lands activists, Morgan Sjogren and Michael Versteeg, who wrote about the experience in a blog post on the website of outdoor retailer REI.
It was an experiment, they said, to see if a claim could serve as “an unusual public lands preservation tactic,” a way to keep other miners out.
As the activists showed, one can stake a claim without any intention of mining and hold onto it, presumably for years, as long as they are willing to pay the annual maintenance fee. But again, without a mineral discovery, the claim can be jumped. They ultimately concluded it wasn’t an effective method.
There has not been a land rush in Bears Ears in the months since the rich asshole’s rollback. This is likely because the 2016 monument designation was not unexpected, meaning anyone interested in staking a claim there had plenty of opportunities to do so. And even the designation did not invalidate existing claims or leases.
That there appears to be no immediate threat of mining or drilling here matters little to environmentalists, however, as the rich asshole’s decision still opens the door for the activities the monument was meant to prevent. They worry Bears Ears could become a target, for instance, if the price of uranium or natural gas were to rebound. Any activity at all could disrupt the largely unspoiled landscape, including the more than 100,000 cultural and archaeological sites such as ancient rock art panels, granaries, burials and well-preserved cliff dwellings. The area is considered sacred to the five Native American tribes that petitioned the Obama administration to grant the area monument status.
At a storytelling session in March, tribal members spoke about their connections to the landscape and their opposition to new mining and development. “Losing Bears Ears to a cloud of industrial smoke from extraction and mining does not keep that preservation of life for us,” Tara Benally, of the Navajo Nation, told HuffPost.
Addressing public concern that the rollback threatens these resources, Lisa Bryant, a spokeswoman for the BLM’s Canyon Country District, said the agency “still must comply with laws, regulations, existing resource management plans, and land use designations,” and that there are additional processes to go through before development can begin.
Five days after staking my claim, I returned to the site to pull the posts. I broke a sweat scurrying up a dry drainage to my southwest corner marker, then stopped to take in the familiar view. I thought about the Puebloans who had inhabited this area for hundreds of years, and the cliff dwellings and rock art the surrounding canyons and buttes might contain. If only there were more time to explore.
I was sitting on the edge of a compromise that the the rich asshole administration conveniently did not mention during its review. Local tribes had petitioned for a monument much bigger than the one designated in 2016, but President Barack Obama opted not to include the uranium-rich area of Red Canyon just over the ridge, the site of the Daneros mine.
The Obama administration specifically gave Energy Fuels room to grow, should the market one day provide the incentive to do so. Still, Utah’s Republican delegation accused him of an “unprecedented land grab” and vowed to lobby the rich asshole to make things right. The president wasted little time answering their calls, stripping more than 1 million acres from Bears Ears, despite the pleas of tribes who fought for protections and the overwhelming public support for keeping the monument intact. In February, Energy Fuels Resources received federal approval to significantly expand the mine.
the rich asshole paved a path for the mining economy to once again flourish in this part of southern Utah. He ushered in what he promised would be “a bright new future of wonder and wealth.” And so far, the only “prospectors” to show up are two conservation activists and a couple of curious journalists.
‘Did that interview just happen?’ Michael Avenatti left reeling by Giuliani’s ‘unmitigated disaster’ on ABC
Michael Avenatti appears on ABC (screen grab)
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Michael Avenatti, the attorney for adult film star Stormy Daniels, reacted with shock on Sunday after the rich asshole attorney Rudy Giuliani appeared before him in an interview claiming to know only half the facts about President some rich asshole’s hush payment to Daniels.
Appearing directly after an interview with Giuliani on ABC’s This Week, Avenatti checked with host George Stephanopoulos to be sure the rant from the rich asshole’s lawyer had not been a prank.
“Did that interview just happen?” Avenatti asked. “I mean, I’m not being spoofed, right?”
“You heard the whole thing?” Stephanopoulos assured him.
“It’s an absolute unmitigated disaster for Rudy Giuliani and the president,” Avenatti said. “It’s a train wreck. I can’t believe that that actually just happened. I mean, what we witnessed by Rudy Giuliani may be one of the worst TV appearances by any attorney on behalf of a client in modern times.”
“He now expects the American people to believe that he doesn’t really know the facts, that as to every key question you asked, he hasn’t communicated with the president about it,” he continued. “I mean, this guy is all over the map over the last 72 hours on some very simple facts that should be very straightforward. I think it is obvious to the American people that this is a cover up.”
According to Avenatti, there is “no question” that the rich asshole’s payment to Daniels — whose real name is Stephanie Clifford — “has everything to do with the [the rich asshole] campaign.”
He also insisted that it Giuliani’s claim that Daniels approached the rich asshole lawyer Michael Cohen for a payoff is “absolutely false.”
“That is not what happened,” he explained. “My client was preparing to tell her story. My client did not approach Michael Cohen, did not have anyone approach Michael Cohen. Michael Cohen approached my client and her counsel in an effort to shut her up in the days before the election.”
“All you have to do is look at what just happened in that interview that they are attempting to snow the American people and when the facts and the evidence come out, it’s going to be a disaster for Michael Cohen, the president and now Rudy Giuliani,” Avenatti said.
Watch the video below from ABC.
Jake Tapper slams Kellyanne Conway for blaming Obama: ‘Just a lie’
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CNN's Jake Tapper didn't let Kellyanne Conway get away with pushing the rich asshole's dishonesty about American hostages in North Korea.
the rich asshole recently told his 3,000th lie in office, and he’s continued that breakneck pace all week. And now, even Kellyanne Conway can’t explain his dishonesty away.
On Sunday morning’s “State of the Union” on CNN, host Jake Tapper repeatedly pressed Conway about the rich asshole’s latest blatant falsehoods.
At first, Conway tried to spin the rich asshole’s lie that he didn’t know about the hush money payment to Stormy Daniels. She offered the pathetic excuse that the rich asshole meant he didn’t know about it at the time the payment was made.
Notably, if that were true, it would seem to imply the rich asshole also didn’t know about the non-disclosure agreement that covered the payment. And that would make the NDA invalid.
But when Tapper pointed out that the rich asshole’s response to a follow-up question was clearly made in the present tense, Conway offered a weak dismissal.
“I think there, you want to look at [the rich asshole’s] tweets, where he says through reimbursement,” she said. “That’s the best I can do.”
Tapper then pressed Conway about another lie the rich asshole told, in which he tried to blame President Barack Obama for three Americans being held hostage in North Korea.
“He went on Twitter and talked about the three American hostages, and how the Obama administration tried and failed to get them free,” Tapper said. “Two of the three were detained while some rich asshole was president.”
He went on to point out what ought to be obvious, even to the rich asshole and Conway.
“There is no way that Obama could have gotten them released because they were captured when the rich asshole was president,” Tapper continued. “That is just a lie, and that tweet is still up there.”
“You are focused on the tweet, and we are focused on the hostages,” Conway responded. And she offered the bizarre excuse that the rich asshole was “probably talking about the terrible nuclear deal.”
But Tapper didn’t let up.
the rich asshole’s actual tweet easily refutes Conway’s nonsensical reasoning. It was clearly not about the Iran nuclear deal. Rather, it was explicitly about the hostages being held in North Korea.
“As everybody is aware, the past Administration has long been asking for three hostages to be released from a North Korean Labor camp, but to no avail,” the rich asshole wrote.
He callously told everyone to “Stay tuned!”
Conway has a long history of telling absurd lies for the rich asshole. But this week provided such clear and outrageous examples that even she appears to know there’s little point in maintaining the charade that the rich asshole is anything but a habitual liar.
Reporters like Tapper need to keep up the pressure, and never let Americans forget that this is not normal.
Giuliani melts down in Sunday interview: ‘My issue is getting up to speed on the facts — I’m about halfway there’
Rudy Giuliani appears on ABC (screen grab)
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Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani on Sunday hinted that his client, President some rich asshole, may assert his Fifth Amendment privilege not to testify in the Russia investigation and admitted that former the rich asshole attorney Michael Cohen may have made payments to multiple women who have claimed to have had affairs with President some rich asshole.
In a rambling interview on ABC’s This Week, Giuliani attempted to repair the damage he has done to the rich asshole’s legal defense over the past week.
Even though he had claimed otherwise just days before, the former New York mayor insisted that the rich asshole did not know of the $130,000 payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels “at the time” and that the hush money had nothing to do with the rich asshole’s campaign.
“Did he repay it over a period of time and then find out what it was about? Yes,” Giuliani said. “I’m comfortable with that. That’s 100 percent.”
“My issue is getting up to speed on the facts here,” he told ABC host George Stephanopoulos. “I’m about halfway there.”
“Has the president or the president’s team in any way suggested to Michael Cohen that the president would pardon him if he were indicted?” Stephanopoulos asked.
“That, that, that — [the rich asshole attorney Jay Sekulow] and I have made it clear and Michael’s lawyers all know that that obviously is not on the table,” Giuliani stuttered. “That’s not a decision to be made now. There’s no reason to pardon anybody now.”
“So it hasn’t been discussed?” Stephanopoulos pressed.
“It hasn’t been discussed,” Giuliani said. “It wouldn’t be illegal to talk about. It would be confusing.”
Giuliani also initially denied that the rich asshole legal team leaked Mueller’s proposed interview questions for the rich asshole, but then he suggested that it could have been a former the rich asshole lawyer.
“The fact is, I don’t care,” he rambled. “The fact is my client is prejudiced by it. But in a way we were helped by it.”
Giuliani went on to suggest that the rich asshole may assert his Fifth Amendment privilege not to testify if he receives a subpoena from Mueller.
“Every lawyer in America thinks he would be a fool to testify,” Giuliani said. “I’ve got a client that wants to testify… so he may testify… but if they keep undermining it [then he may not].”
Watch the video below from ABC
Giuliani delivers incoherent, damaging interview about Stormy Daniels on ABC
Why on earth is this man on TV?
the rich asshole attorney Rudy Giuliani, who was forced to issue a statement recanting his previous comments on Stormy Daniels last week, went back on national TV on Sunday to discuss the matter in detail.
He came, by his own admission, with no greater understanding of the facts. On multiple occasions, he declared the facts of the matter irrelevant.
In the process, he made a number of damaging admissions that could complicate the rich asshole’s efforts in ongoing civil and criminal legal processes surrounding the issue, all while claiming he was brought on as the president’s lawyers to deal with an entirely separate matter, the Mueller investigation.
Giuliani started by refusing to acknowledge that the rich asshole had even met Stormy Daniels, though he was forced to backtrack after ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos showed a picture of the rich asshole and Daniels standing together.
Indeed, throughout the interview, Giuliani often appeared confused and in over his head. After Stephanopoulos asked when the rich asshole first learned that Daniels wanted money “to keep quiet about the relationship,” Giuliani’s response was “[I] don’t know and it doesn’t matter to me.”
Similarly, Stephanopoulos asked Giuliani about Giuliani’s own statements to Buzzfeed that the rich asshole only agreed to reimburse his lawyer, Michael Cohen, for the money he paid to Stormy Daniels after Cohen complained to the rich asshole about being stiffed. In response, Giuliani dismissed his own previous statements to Buzzfeed as “rumors” and claimed that “right now I’m at the point where I’m learning” about the facts.
The overall impression created by Giuliani’s appearance, in other words, was more Mr. Magoo than Perry Mason. Giuliani was confused, self-contradictory, and ignorant of key facts.
Yet, no matter how unprepared Giuliani was for Sunday’s interview, he is still the rich asshole’s lawyer and that carries with it very serious consequences for his client. When a lawyer speaks on behalf of a client, their words typically carry the same legal force as if they’d been spoken by the client him or herself.
So when Giuliani stated in Sunday’s interview that the $130,000 payment to Daniels “may have involved the campaign,” or when he suggested that Daniels had greater leverage over the rich asshole because the rich asshole was running for president, those are statements that run counter to the rich asshole legal team’s larger narrative — that the payment was irrelevant to the campaign. And they potentially could be turned against the rich asshole in court.
There’s a reason, in other words, why sophisticated clients typically do not send confused and ill-informed lawyers out to represent them on national television. the rich asshole, however, does not seem to have gotten that memo.
‘I would like him to stop lying’: CNN’s Tapper confronts manic Kellyanne Conway over the rich asshole lies about Daniels payoff
Kellyanne Conway, Jake Tapper -- screenshot
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In a typical confrontational exchange between CNN host Jake Tapper and White House adviser Kellyanne Conway, an exasperated Tapper finally cut in on the filibustering aide to President some rich asshole to say he was tired of the lying.
As the State of the Union host tried to get a straight answer out of Conway over the timeline of when the rich asshole became aware that hush money was being paid to adult film star Stormy Daniels by his personal attorney, Michael Cohen, Conway continually deflected by talking about job numbers and complaining about how the network covers the rich asshole.
“Do you think his job includes lying to the American people because he continues to do so?” Tapper asked.
“He does many things,” Conway shot back. “You just want that to go viral and you want to say President the rich asshole and lie in the same sentence.”
“No, I would like him to stop lying,” Tapper interrupted.
“He talked about the three American hostages [taken by North Korea] and how the Obama administration tried and failed to get them free,” Tapper then continued. “Two of the three were detained while some rich asshole was president so there is no way that Obama could have gotten them released because they were captured when the rich asshole was president. That is just a lie and that tweet is still up there. That is just symbolic of the fact that this president gets in his own way all the time even when there is something good happening.”
“You are focused on the tweet and we are focused on the hostages,” Conway replied.
[Editor’s note: An earlier version of this story had Tapper saying, “I would like you to stop lying.” Repeated listening seems to indicate he said either “him” or “it.” The story and headline have been corrected to reflect this change.]
Watch the video below via CNN:
Report: the rich asshole aides hired spies to ‘get dirt’ on Obama officials behind Iran deal
A plan to scrap the Iran nuclear deal by discrediting those who crafted it.
Aides to President some rich asshole hired a private Israeli intelligence firm in May to “get dirt” on former Obama administration officials behind the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, according to a report in The Observer.
“The idea was that people acting for the rich asshole would discredit those who were pivotal in selling the deal, making it easier to pull out of it,” a source told the newspaper.
Documents reviewed by The Observer reportedly show that investigators were asked to look into the political careers and private lives of Ben Rhodes, the former deputy national security adviser to President Barack Obama, and Colin Kahl, former national security adviser to vice-President Joe Biden. The White House declined to comment to The Observer.
The report said that the private intelligence firm was asked to look into “personal relationships, any involvement with Iran-friendly lobbyists, and if they had benefited personally or politically from the peace deal.”
the rich asshole’s team reportedly made the move after the US president visited Tel Aviv in May 2017, where he told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu,“Iran will never have nuclear weapons.”
Both Rhodes and Kahl said they did not know of any campaign against them. Rhodes added, “I was not aware, though sadly am not surprised. I would say that digging up dirt on someone for carrying out their professional responsibilities in their positions as White House officials is a chillingly authoritarian thing to do.”
Perhaps it was just a coincidence that this obvious scam targeting my family had all the hallmarks of an intel op and coincided with Team Trump's reported efforts to "dig up dirt" on me. 9/10
But the fact that I even have to think about the possibility that my family was targeted by people working for the President is yet another sign of the fundamental degradation of our country that Trump has produced. 10/10
On Twitter, Kahl recounted an incident last year where his wife was contacted by a phony representative to a U.K. private equity firm who knew a lot of specific information about her and wanted to meet for coffee.
Kahl acknowledged that the scam could have been coincidental, but said that “the fact that I even have to think about the possibility that my family was targeted by people working for the president is yet another sign of the fundamental degradation of our country that the rich asshole has produced.”
The news comes just days from the president announcing a decision on whether the United States will withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal. the rich asshole has said he will make his decision on May 12. He has been harshly critical of the deal, and is expected to scrap it.
Iran, for its part, has warned Washington not to scuttle the agreement.
“If America leaves the nuclear deal, this will entail historic regret for it,” said Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said on Sunday.
The United Nations also has recommended that the United States not abandon the deal.
The deal brokered in 2015 between Iran and six world powers — United States, China, Russia, Germany, France and the UK — lifted economic sanctions on Iran in return for the country to curb its nuclear program. The negotiation is seen as one of Obama’s signature foreign policy achievements.
Devin Nunes says he will hold Attorney General Jeff Sessions in contempt of Congress over Russia investigation
Devin Nunes speaks to Fox News (screen grab)
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House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-CA) said on Sunday that Republican lawmakers will move this week to hold Attorney General Jeff Sessions in contempt of Congress.
The morning after the rich asshole attorney Rudy Giuliani told Fox News that Sessions should end special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, Nunes phoned in to Fox & Friends to blast the attorney general for “abuse” of FISA counterintelligence wiretaps “and other matters.”
According to Nunes, the Justice Department has refused to comply with a subpoena for information that was used to convince a secret court to approve a wiretaps on then-the rich asshole campaign staffer Carter Page.
“The only thing that’s left that we can do is we have to move quickly to hold the attorney general of the United States in contempt and that’s what I’m going to press for this week,” Nunes revealed. “We’ve asked for very important information, it’s still classified. Because of the way they conducted this information, most of this information is classified. But because this is so important, I’m not going to take any excuse to say, ‘Oh we’re harming national security.'”
Watch the video below from Fox News.
Giuliani says the rich asshole may invoke the Fifth Amendment and refuse to speak to Mueller
This may be the only good advice Giuliani has given the rich asshole.
Former New York mayor and the rich asshole legal counsel Rudy Giuliani gave a long and, at times, incoherent interview to ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos Sunday morning.
At one point, Giuliani dismissed the now-famous $130,000 payment to porn star Stormy Daniels because $130,000 “is not a great deal of money.” After Stephanopoulous played a clip of Fox News legal analyst Andrew Napolitano labeling some of Giuliani’s previous statements about the rich asshole “unworthy of belief,” the former mayor’s defense was that Napolitano “knows less about” this case “than I do.”
If Giuliani made any news during the 20 minutes he spent offering a stream-of-consciousness defense of his most famous client, it came at the end, when the president’s lawyer suggested that the rich asshole may refuse to speak with Special Counsel Robert Mueller.
Pres. Trump's attorney Rudy Giuliani says he can't be confident the president won't invoke the Fifth Amendment if he speaks with the special counsel: "I've got a client who wants to testify... I hope we get a chance to tell him the risk that he's taking." abcn.ws/2KANG5L
In response to a direct question from Stephanopoulous — “are you confident that the president will not take the Fifth in this case?” — Giuliani responded, “how could I ever be confident of that?”
“Every lawyer in America thinks [the rich asshole] would be a fool to testify,” Giuliani claimed. “I’ve got a client who wants to testify . . . and you know, [the rich asshole counsel] Jay [Sekulow] and I said to ourselves ‘my goodness, I hope that we get a chance to tell him the risk that he’s taking.”
Giuliani’s suggestion that the rich asshole may not testify because it would be too risky followed several attempts to blame this state of affairs on Mueller and claim that the special counsel is untrustworthy. In one especially awkward exchange, Giuliani blamed Mueller for leaking a set of potential questions he might ask the rich asshole.
Yet, almost immediately after Giuliani attempted to blame this leak on Mueller, Stephanopoulous cut the former mayor off to point out significant evidence that the leak came from the rich asshole camp.
“Let me stop you right there, because, in fact, those questions were written by Jay Sekulow after a meeting with Mueller and his team,” Stephanopoulous explained. The leaked document, according to Stephanopoulous, captured “the rich asshole team’s take on the questions” and the leaked document was “made by the rich asshole team.”
So, to summarize, the Team the rich asshole put a lawyer on national television to defend the president. That lawyer, by his own admission, doesn’t know everything there is to know about how his client has behaved. He made dubious accusations against the special counsel. He then offered an odd defense of the president’s conduct that appears unlikely to endear the rich asshole to the sort of people who don’t think of $130,000 as a small amount of money.
In spite of all of this, Giuliani is right about one important thing: It would be extraordinarily risky for the rich asshole to speak to Mueller under oath. The likelihood that the rich asshole could spend several hours speaking to a skilled prosecutor without telling several material lies is very small. We are, after all, talking about some rich asshole.
SNL’s ‘Weekend Update’ ridicules the rich asshole’s desperate move to save presidency: ‘They’re finally putting in Rudy’
Colin Jost on SNL - screenshot
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Saturday Night Live’s “Weekend Update” predictably seized on President some rich asshole’s decision to deploy former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani this past week, calling Giuliani’s blurting out that the rich asshole repaid attorney Michael Cohen for the Stormy Daniels’ hush money, “Maybe the best confession I’ve seen on TV that didn’t end with ‘Created by Dick Wolf.’”
“Well, the clock might be running out on the rich asshole’s presidency, so you know what that means: they’re finally putting in Rudy,” co-host Colin Jost smirked. “But instead of making a great play, this Rudy immediately tackled his own quarterback.”
Jost then criticized Giuliani for using “funneled money” to explain the way the rich asshole shifted cash to attorney Cohen.
“Dude, ‘funneled’ is not typically a word innocent people use when talking about money,” Jost explained. “No one says, ‘Yeah, my grandma funneled me five dollars on my birthday.’”
Co-host Michael Che then joined in the fun.
“I have a couple questions, like: What kind of billionaire pays for stuff in installments?” Che asked. “You’re the president of the United States, why are you paying for sex like it’s a NordicTrack?”
You can watch the video below via SNL:
Stormy Daniels mocks the rich asshole with Saturday Night Live surprise
By
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'I know you don't believe in climate change, but a storm is a-coming, baby.'
Adult film star Stormy Daniels embarrassed the rich asshole in front of millions with a surprise appearance on this week’s “Saturday Night Live.”
During a lengthy sketch depicting a phone call between attorney Michael Cohen (played by Ben Stiller) and Alec Baldwin’s the rich asshole, the fake Cohen dialed up the actual Stormy Daniels.
The ersatz the rich asshole asked Daniels, “What do you need for this to all go away?”
“A resignation,” Daniels replied.
And when Baldwin’s the rich asshole asked, “I solved North and South Korea — why can’t I solve us?” Daniels had a pointed message.
“Sorry, Donald. It’s too late for that,” she replied. “I know you don’t believe in climate change, but a storm is a-coming, baby.”
Although done as a comedy bit, Daniels’ cameo marks the rare occasion that anyone has called on the rich asshole to resign over his misconduct. And her bit also constitutes a canny use of television, the medium the rich asshole has tried to use as a yardstick of his own power.
The hush money payoff to Daniels to attempt to ensure her silence about her affair with the rich asshole continues to blow up. the rich asshole was forced to do damage control over his new attorney Rudy Giuliani’s multiple televised gaffes in which he continued to confirm the payment to Daniels, and to imply the existence of others.
Daniels speaking out in such a direct and high-profile manner means that the rich asshole’s terrible week could be far from over. And if the rich asshole can’t control himself and decides to respond to the bit, it could get a whole lot worse.
COMEDY
It’s not going to help some rich asshole to deny climate change this time, the actual Stormy Daniels warned Alec Baldwin in a stunner turn on “Saturday Night Live’s” cold open.
“A storm’s a comin’, baby,” she smiles.
“What do you need for this to all go away?” Baldwin asks.
“A resignation,” she responds, to a hoot from the audience.
“Yeah right. Being president is like doing porn — once you do it, it’s hard to do anything else,” Baldwin explains.
The “Donald” wants to stay on the phone and talk dirty, but there are too many other fires to put out in the sketch. The cold open was chock-a-block full of shaky White House characters — and stars — from Martin Short’s Dr. Harold Bornstein, to Ben Stiller’s Michael Cohen and Aidy Bryant’s Sara Huckabee Sanders
Kate McKinnon pulled off yet another mind-boggling transformation, this time as Rudy Giuliani, who the rich asshole calls the “greatest legal mind” since “My Cousin Vinny.”
“Cohen” has a question for Giuliani on the phone, and asks if he’s alone. “I’m pretty much alone,” McKinnon says — from the set of Fox News.
Scarlett Johansson’s Ivanka the rich asshole pops up with Jimmy Fallon’s hysterical Jared Kushner to phone Ben Stiller with a question: “Did Giuliani just call Jared ‘disposable’ on national TV?” “Ivanka” asks. “Because Jared is furious.”
“Cohen” tells the first daughter that, yes, Jared might have to be thrown to the wolves, but she’ll be safe.
“What did he say?” asks Fallon. Johansson smiles: “He says you’re fine.”
And everything is being recorded by the FBI.
Check out the clip up top.
the rich asshole is about to kill the Iran deal — and what lies ahead could be catastrophe
President some rich asshole complains about the treatment of his pick to be Veterans Affairs secretary (Screen cap).
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Here comes the next act in the Theater of Desperation that Washington has made of American foreign policy. Unless President the rich asshole changes his ever-changing mind, the administration will abandon the accord governing Iran’s nuclear programs next weekend, assuming the White House holds to its schedule. Congress will then be authorized to reimpose the sanctions that had been in place before the agreement went into effect in early 2016.
This is stupid enough. If you ever wonder how a decaying empire behaves and do not feel like plowing through Gibbons’ history of Rome’s decline and fall, the next little while is your moment. Erratically, you will find. Irrationally. Desperately in its fury to preserve the primacy that cannot be preserved.
This story first appeared in Salon.
But pitiful is to follow stupid, erratic, irrational and desperate.
Washington had five partners in the 2013–15 negotiations with Iran: Britain, France, Germany, China and Russia. It will betray all of them — as well as Iran, of course — when it walks out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, as the pact is formally known. The European powers on this list will then acquiesce to the rich asshole’s wishes and begin to negotiate a new agreement with the rich asshole administration. This is pitiful. The French, British and German leadership should be ashamed of themselves for this display of cowardice and unhygienic dependence.
Let’s play “What is wrong with this picture?” I win. For one thing, Iran has no intention of entering into new talks so as to open the JCPOA for modification or replacement. Mohammad Javad Zarif made this rippingly plain in a statement distributed by videoThursday. “Let me make it absolutely clear once and for all,” Iran’s foreign minister said. “We will neither outsource our security, nor will we renegotiate or add on to a deal we have already implemented in good faith.” The usually composed Zarif seems in a state of controlled apoplexy, if there is such a thing, and I do not blame him.
Second point: The other signatories in the P5+1 group, China and Russia, have already announced they will stand foursquare behind the Iranians. Sound foreign ministries are usually going to leave room for negotiation as a matter of principle, but I do not see the Iranians, Chinese or Russians going anywhere near the preposterous terms Washington and the Europeans now seem intent on putting on paper. I will return to these terms shortly.
What are we watching here? There are a couple of executive summaries readers may find useful.
One, the Iran accord now takes shape as a confrontation between West and non–West. We are likely to see a lot of this in coming years, as half a millennium of Western preeminence draws to a close before our eyes. But the Iran accord could have been something special in precisely this respect — a model of global cooperation on which much more was to be built. The Iranians and Russians were very clear about their aspirations on this point. Now a pact once full of a certain kind of promise will mark another step in the consolidation of a non–Western bloc that has China, Russia and Iran as charter members. The gathering density of their ties seems to be a secret only in Washington.
Two, Washington is about to do what it often does when circumstances require it to enter into a diplomatic process: It negotiates, it signs an agreement, it commences complaining about things the agreement does not cover and then it abandons the agreement. You have seen this before, readers, although some may not be aware of it, for the press plays an especially pernicious role in this progression: By the time Washington abrogates its responsibilities, you have read all about why the other side cannot be trusted, why the other side is at fault and why the U.S. is the aggrieved party.
There must be many possible outcomes in these weird circumstances — weird because there is simply no logic to them. Maybe in history the Western powers have acted this irrationally, but I cannot think of such an occasion in my lifetime.
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