In November of 1998 Newt Gingrich tried to impeach a president, now 19 years later, it seems he may get his wish.
And this isnt entirely a cheap shot at Gingrich either....his attempt to impeach Clinton might actually link into the future impeachment of President Trump.
So despite what was written on the articles of impeachment for Clinton, the public case was basically the guy was immoral cause he was cheated on his wife and was having all of these affairs and Gingich and rest of the GOP keep bringing up new stories and new allegations to attack Clinton with...what his wife called a "vast right wing conspiracy", and some of these allegations started prior to the actual impeachment proceedings
Well one of the "Conspirators" was a gentleman named Peter W. Smith, who back in the 1990's actually worked for Newt Gingrich's political action committee. Smith was the one who went digging into some reports by Arkansas State Troopers and eventually led him and David Brock (at the time a conservative and working with Smith) to one Paula Jones...the first of many well known stories about Bill Clinton's affairs.
Now how does this have any bearing on Donald Trump's possible impeachment nearly two decades later?
Simple. Smith never gave up the cause. He kinda made it his lifes mission to attack the Clintons. And not too long after then Candidate Trump suggested the Russians did hack and should turn over Clintons emails during a campaign speech, Smith decided to test that exact theory.
So he, and a group he put together to assist him with this task reached out to Russian hackers and operatives to try to acquire the emails. Of course this wound up being futile because while its true Hillary's servers COULD have been hacked, but as the FBI itself determined there is no evidence it was.
But thats not to say his attempts were inconsequential. Far from it. In fact based on the timeline Smith gave to the Wallstreet Journal, it seems possible that it was Smith's attempts at reaching out to the Russian hackers, that were picked up by the FBI and used as the justification to start the investigation into collusion between Trump and Russia in the first place, as the intercepted communications mentioned trying to get the Hillary Emails to the Trump campaign.
However, it should be noted Smith denies working for the Trump Campaign, and they deny employing him....and that seems to be true.
But wait I hear you ask, how does this get Trump impeached? Afterall didn't I just prove it was possible the communications the FBI intercepted originated with someone outside the Trump campaign, and therefore actually clear the Trump campaign of any wrongdoing?
Nope. Because it turns out, just like in the 1990's Smith wasnt working alone...he claims he had a partner....Michael Flynn. And not just Michael Flynn either, Smith claims that the Flynn Intel Group, Flynns consulting firm was partnered with him, and that Michael Flynn Jr was actually one of the members of his investigative group.
Now for what its worth, Flynn Sr, Jr, and the firm have all refused to comment on the connection, but the Trump campaign allowed it was possible Smith was working for Flynn in his role as a private individual but not as part of the campaign.
In short, what this means (if true) is that Smith's efforts were directly connected to a member of the Trump campaign, and therefore the Trump campaign was in fact attempting to collude illegally with Russian operatives. It may be worth noting here that Smith says he is pretty sure several of the groups he got in contact with that either claimed they had or could obtain the emails were connected to the Russian government. (though even if they arnt it doesnt really matter, colluding with any foreigner to interfere in an election is a crime)
But even this would just prove that one member of the Trump campaign was engaging in illegal activity, it doesnt prove Trump did. And had Trump just let things play out he'd likely be fine right now.
But he didnt...instead he made 2 major mistakes that now make this rise to the level of an impeachment level threat to his presidency.
Mistake 1) He refused to fire Mike Flynn when first first got caught
Mistake 2) He fired James Comey and went on TV and stated it was because of "that Russian thing"
Now admittedly I already covered the details and as step by step of the Flynn firing a few blogs back so I wont waste time rehashing it here, but if you want the full version click here.
But basically of those 2 events the important facts are these:
Trump didnt fire Flynn [who he already knew was taking money from the Turks] for 18 days after the FBI alerted him to [what would be from trumps point of view, additional] possible wrongdoing by Flynn with Russia, and appears to have only fired him because the media got the story. This is in stark contrast to Paul Manafort who was canned almost immediately after Trump became aware he was working for a Ukrainian group funded by the Russian
After being fired Flynn tried to get an immunity deal.....suggesting he had something on Trump.
Then we move on the James Comey firing. Trump has already said it was because of the Russia thing, and at the time the focus of the investigation was the already fired Mike Flynn.
So, based on those 3 things, it seems Trump for whatever reason didnt want to fire Flynn and tried to prevent him from even being investigated, for an as of then unknown reason. And that Flynn at least seemed to think no matter what he got in trouble for, he had something worse on the President.
And well, this would seem fit perfectly into the "holes" of the above summery.
Consider, if Donald Trump at least knew about (if not outright asked or suggested it in the first place) Flynn working with Smith to reach out to foreign agents to hack the US government, it would be the perfect reason for him to want to keep Flynn on his staff no matter what, to make sure Flynn couldnt sell him out for what is definitely illegal and would be seen by many as an act of treason (it probably isnt but good luck convincing people of the difference).
It would also explain the reports coming out from time to time that Trump wants to and expects to bring Flynn back to his circle after the investigation concludes. He needs to keep Flynn close by.
And it would explain why even after Flynn was fired, Trump still tried to protect him from the investigation by firing James Comey, to stop the FBI from finding out about this.
And lastly it would explain what Mike Flynn though he could offer in exchange for immunity. And if I was Donald Trump i'd be up at night wondering if the reason he was turned down was because at the time this was so disconnected from everything else, the FBI didnt know about it yet and didnt realize the value of what Flynn had, or if they already knew, and therefore Flynn had nothing to offer him.
Now admittedly this entire thing has two major bits of speculation in it. The first is the assumption the Smith is telling the truth about working with Flynn, which its possible he was not.
The second is the assumption that Donald Trump knew about it. Its possible he didnt, and hes just stupid and the entire thing is a series of unfortunate coincidences.
But the problem for Donald Trump, at least from an impeachment standpoint, is only one of this bits of speculation matters. We dont actually need conclusive proof Trump knew about any of this to impeach him, a "preponderance of evidence" that he probably did or should have is enough. After all, its been 45 years and we still cant conclusively prove Nixon knew about Watergate. (Quick show of hands by the way, anyone think he didnt do it? ANYONE?)
And thats where Trump's other problems feed into this.
First, while not claiming to directly work with them, Smith did claim he could get access to and had talked with Steve Bannon, Chief White house Strategist, and Kellyanne Conway, another of trumps advisors. And well the more people in Trumps inner circle knew about the Smith, the higher the likelyhood Trump did do.
Second. At the moment Jared Kushner, the Presidents son in law and possibly his most trusted adviser (giving all the responsibility hes given), is being investigated for money laundering on behalf of the Russians. The investigation appears to hinge on two things, buying a building for more than its fair market value, which he then loaned to Deutsche Bank, which happens to be Donald Trump's biggest creditor, and at the time was involved in a russian backed money laundering scandal in which as part of it, Deutsche Bank would reemberse via rent people with accounts at the bank who over-payed for buildings, which is how they effectively cleaned the money (just to keep the explanation kinda simple if also imprecise). It should be noted by the way that this deal was worked out by Marc Kasowitz, who is currently severing as Donald Trump's personal lawyer defending him from the special prosecutor.
Kushner is also alleged to have had a private meeting (that he later failed to disclose on his security paperwork) with the heads of Vnesheconombank a bank run by the Russian government, that also happens to be another Trump creditor. At this meeting Kushner is alleged to have tried to set up a back channel line of communications between the Trump Campaign and Vladimir Putin, specifically to discuss Syria, and the point of contact he suggested for these conversations was Mike Flynn.
Third: (And this is new). The other day Trump and TV show Morning Joe got into a bit of a spat. Now to be honest with you, this would normally be totally irrelevant if not for the fact that both sides claim they had previously been in contact over a national enquirer story that was going to out the fact that the Morning Joe co-hosts had been carrying on an affair behind one of their spouses backs (for the record, they deny the affair, claiming the relationship started after both were divorced).
Now Trump claims the two hosts contacted him to see if he could get the enquirer to pull the story, given that he and the owner of the enquirer are close friends and he refused, which is legal.
Morning Joe on the other hand, claims Trump's administration contacted them, and threatened them with having the enquirer run the story unless they both personally apologized to him for running negative coverage of him on their show. Furthermore Morning Joe claims to have kept copies of all the communications between them and team trump, as well as notify their employers NBCUniversial at the time of the original conversations a few months back. Lastly they are also claiming that the person who contacted them was Jared Kushner. It should be noted if Morning Joe is telling the truth Team Trump would have broken laws on extortion and coercion, in DC (where Trump lives) New York (Where morning Joe is) and the federal level.
What I'm getting at is, there are enough other things going on right now to easily paint a picture of a corrupt administration. So proving Trump's personally knowledge isnt necessary as a preponderance of evidence is starting to suggest that their is too much going on for him not to have some idea unless he's intentionally trying not to.
Nixon, again was never proven to have direct knowledge of anything, instead the "proof" stopped with the second incarnation of the "Watergate Seven" most famously H.R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman.
Trump, its starting to seem may have his own haldeman and ehrlichman, Kushner and Flynn, who seem to be connected to .
Now I'll admit, this narrative here isnt all inclusive. For example it doesnt really explain Jeff Sessions' motivations or reasons for repeatedly committing perjury as far as his interactions with the Russian Ambassador, why he either didnt object to James Comey's firing, warn Trump it would blow up in his face (which is his job), and/or went along with the original bullshit justification, and as an result may expose himself to conspiracy charges, if shit hits the fan
It also doesnt explain Devin Nunes' motivations for his involvement, back when he was supposed to be investigating Trump and instead helped participate in a white house stunt in which he pretended to brief them on new information he'd uncovered that exonerated them, only to have it come out the information he briefed the white house on was given to him in secret the day before by the white house.
Nor does it deal with Roger Stone, a long time Trump adviser who claimed direct access to and influence over Wikileaks, who is under investigation for unknown (but believed to be related to Trump) reasons by the FBI.
However all of that suggests only that there is still more to come and that the pit around Trump is going to get deeper and deeper.
But, again assuming Smith is telling the truth, what we have now for the first time ever is an thread tying the original FBI investigation to the Trump campaign that also explains the fills the holes in that particular charges public narrative.
Which is exactly what you dont want if your trying to avoid impeachment.
Sunday, July 2, 2017
Thursday, June 8, 2017
Biggest losers and winners from James Comey's testimony
Ex FBI director James Comey gave his long awaited testimony on Capitol Hill today. Given his testimony had the potential to bring down a president, everyone was paying attention. So given that level of attention, its important to ask, who exactly where the biggest losers and winners of what Comey had to say.
Losers:
3) John McCain. That whole bit where he seemed incapable of understanding that the Hillary investigation and the Trump investigation arnt the same thing and even refered to "president comey"? thats the most popular bit of the testimony on twitter. Something tells me McCain's reputation is gonna take a bit a hit....
2) Jeff Sessions. Comey basically just told the world "if you want to find a major news story and scandal, you should totally look over here" by claiming Sessions ties to the Russians run even deeper than whats already been reported. And given that Sessions appears to have played a key role many of the decisions now being investigated, he may want to start updating his resume.
1) Donald Trump. Remember when Trump said he had tapes of his conversations with Comey? Yea well Comey called his bluff, and it turns out their are no tapes. So that whole thing with tapes was a empty threat to try to convince Comey not to testify. By the way, trying to prevent someone from testifying via threat is witness intimidation, which a crime and of course an impeachable offense.
Speaking of impeachment.....the entire case that Trump didnt commit Obstruction of Justice now revolves around what the subtext and implications of his words were. We are quickly approaching "what the definition of "is" is" territory, and arguments at that level of technical detail tend not to work well in the court of public opinion (which is the one that matters as far as impeachment).
And incidentally, no less than the Speaker of the House Paul Ryan is saying Trump's conversations with Comey were improper. Ryan however just thinks they were the result of Trump's political naivete not realizing you cant do those kinds of things rather than anything insidious. However given the impropriety of the conversations isnt being disputed...Trump's on really thin ice.
Finally, by all accounts Sessions is one of Trump's closest advisers, or was at one point. Jared Kushner is another. Sessions is now where Comey is suggesting the Special Prosecutor (and others look) and Kusher is allegedly already the focus of the Special Prosecutor. As with all political scandals theres a tipping point when enough corrupt advisers bring down the executive though guilt by association if nothing else.
Winners:
2) Donald Trump. To be fair, nothing new really came out in Comey's testimony....we already knew about everything in it. So "no change" has to be considered a win. In fact had team trump managed to avoid shooting themselves in the face by admitting the tapes dont exist and therefore they cant refute Comey, this day would have arguably been a big win for trump....instead of a half win/half lose.
1) James Comey. Comey admitted he was leaking information on Trump after his firing to get a special prosecutor convinced....and it worked.
Now to understand how big a win that is, despite Republican hopes the special prosecutor will find nothing, that has never happened. Every time a special prosecutor has been called at least one, and usually multiple mid to high level members of the administration have been forced to resign, appear in court or go to prison.
So someone (at least) in the Trump administration is going to lose their job (at a minimum) thanks to James Comey. By the way, does anyone think its an accident Comey decided to direct attention towards Sessions today?
Best part is, there is likely nothing Trump can do about the leak either. Historical precedent allows law enforcement to keep their own records and as their own property. And Comey was free to show his records to whoever he wanted. Unless there was something classified in them, he's home free. And the only thing that might have been classified was the bits where he told Trump he wasnt under investigation...but that was originally revealed by Trump in Comey's termination letter. So Comey didnt leak that...Trump did (of course as president Trump can declassify that bit to release it himself...but then he cant later claim its still classified if someone else mentions it)
Special Bonus: Luckiest Person in Washington
Loretta Lynch. Comey hit Lynch pretty hard with his claim she tried to get him to alter the wording of his statements to benefit a political narrative. However, nothing will come of this.
Normally this would be red meat to the GOP who'd try to distract from the Trump scandal and tear lynch apart instead. But they cant.
Because the entire case for obstruction of justice against Trump is that he tried to get the FBI to alter its focus to benefit his political narrative...basically the same as Lynch (and slightly more serious as Lynch wanted words changed, Trump wanted the investigation changed). So any attempt to prove how illegal or unethical what Lynch did was would also make the case against Trump as well....in other words the GOP cant push this without also assuring Trump's impeachment for the same.
Where as the public tends to be apathetic towards ex government officials...so until or unless Lynch tries to reenter public life, shes likely weathered any actual storm directed against her.
Losers:
3) John McCain. That whole bit where he seemed incapable of understanding that the Hillary investigation and the Trump investigation arnt the same thing and even refered to "president comey"? thats the most popular bit of the testimony on twitter. Something tells me McCain's reputation is gonna take a bit a hit....
2) Jeff Sessions. Comey basically just told the world "if you want to find a major news story and scandal, you should totally look over here" by claiming Sessions ties to the Russians run even deeper than whats already been reported. And given that Sessions appears to have played a key role many of the decisions now being investigated, he may want to start updating his resume.
1) Donald Trump. Remember when Trump said he had tapes of his conversations with Comey? Yea well Comey called his bluff, and it turns out their are no tapes. So that whole thing with tapes was a empty threat to try to convince Comey not to testify. By the way, trying to prevent someone from testifying via threat is witness intimidation, which a crime and of course an impeachable offense.
Speaking of impeachment.....the entire case that Trump didnt commit Obstruction of Justice now revolves around what the subtext and implications of his words were. We are quickly approaching "what the definition of "is" is" territory, and arguments at that level of technical detail tend not to work well in the court of public opinion (which is the one that matters as far as impeachment).
And incidentally, no less than the Speaker of the House Paul Ryan is saying Trump's conversations with Comey were improper. Ryan however just thinks they were the result of Trump's political naivete not realizing you cant do those kinds of things rather than anything insidious. However given the impropriety of the conversations isnt being disputed...Trump's on really thin ice.
Finally, by all accounts Sessions is one of Trump's closest advisers, or was at one point. Jared Kushner is another. Sessions is now where Comey is suggesting the Special Prosecutor (and others look) and Kusher is allegedly already the focus of the Special Prosecutor. As with all political scandals theres a tipping point when enough corrupt advisers bring down the executive though guilt by association if nothing else.
Winners:
2) Donald Trump. To be fair, nothing new really came out in Comey's testimony....we already knew about everything in it. So "no change" has to be considered a win. In fact had team trump managed to avoid shooting themselves in the face by admitting the tapes dont exist and therefore they cant refute Comey, this day would have arguably been a big win for trump....instead of a half win/half lose.
1) James Comey. Comey admitted he was leaking information on Trump after his firing to get a special prosecutor convinced....and it worked.
Now to understand how big a win that is, despite Republican hopes the special prosecutor will find nothing, that has never happened. Every time a special prosecutor has been called at least one, and usually multiple mid to high level members of the administration have been forced to resign, appear in court or go to prison.
So someone (at least) in the Trump administration is going to lose their job (at a minimum) thanks to James Comey. By the way, does anyone think its an accident Comey decided to direct attention towards Sessions today?
Best part is, there is likely nothing Trump can do about the leak either. Historical precedent allows law enforcement to keep their own records and as their own property. And Comey was free to show his records to whoever he wanted. Unless there was something classified in them, he's home free. And the only thing that might have been classified was the bits where he told Trump he wasnt under investigation...but that was originally revealed by Trump in Comey's termination letter. So Comey didnt leak that...Trump did (of course as president Trump can declassify that bit to release it himself...but then he cant later claim its still classified if someone else mentions it)
Special Bonus: Luckiest Person in Washington
Loretta Lynch. Comey hit Lynch pretty hard with his claim she tried to get him to alter the wording of his statements to benefit a political narrative. However, nothing will come of this.
Normally this would be red meat to the GOP who'd try to distract from the Trump scandal and tear lynch apart instead. But they cant.
Because the entire case for obstruction of justice against Trump is that he tried to get the FBI to alter its focus to benefit his political narrative...basically the same as Lynch (and slightly more serious as Lynch wanted words changed, Trump wanted the investigation changed). So any attempt to prove how illegal or unethical what Lynch did was would also make the case against Trump as well....in other words the GOP cant push this without also assuring Trump's impeachment for the same.
Where as the public tends to be apathetic towards ex government officials...so until or unless Lynch tries to reenter public life, shes likely weathered any actual storm directed against her.
Tuesday, May 9, 2017
The Trump/Russia scandal: Is it on its way to the Flynnish line?
Since even before he was inaugurated, President Donald Trump has been dogged by allegations of being a Russian stooge. And its starting to turn into the story that never ends.
After all Russian's did try to recruit Carter Page as an agent
Paul Manafort, Trumps original campaign manager, was working for the Russians.
Trump asked Russia to hack into Hillary's emails on national TV
His sons have a long record of talking about Russian investments in Trumps properties.
Trump wont release his tax returns...so who knows if hes getting Russian payouts
Trump lies about his relationship to Russia with things we already know about.
And, oh yea, Trumps first National Security Advisory was a foreign agent for the Russian government.
But, to be fair, many of these dont really seems to matter, nor are they indicative of any wrongdoing.
Carter Page: Was not successfully recruited by all accounts. May have accidentally passed along some information but being suckered isnt a crime.
Manafort: At the time, the information was he was working for the Ukrainians (eventually revealed to be a group backed by the Russians)....and he was fired when that came out. No evidence that Im aware of suggests Team Trump knew about this ahead of time. So in all fairness they appear to have handled this properly.
Hillarys Emails: Trump says stupid shit ALL THE TIME. No evidence as of now to suggest this was anything more than one of his regularly scheduled brain malfunctions
Russian investments in his projects: These are all true. They are also all legal and known....no real scandal here.
His taxes: Given that we know Russia is invested in the Trump Organization, there are only three reasons Trump wont release his taxes: He's a Russian puppet taking direct payouts from the Russians. He's massively in debt to the Russians and is therefore a blackmail risk. He's no where near as rich as he claims and his razor thin ego cant handle it. Now given Russia keeps trying to buy off his advisers, I think its safe to assume Trump's not directly on the Russian payroll...but either of the other two options is a possibility, and Trump being at risk for Blackmail would be a major national security problem.
Trump lies about things we already know about: As a single example Trump only admits to a single business deal in FL as his only interaction with Russia. But Russia also hosted the Miss Universe Pageant (which Trump owns). Now to be fair...no evidence of anything illegal, but it really doesnt help Trumps credibility that he lies about things a 30 second search on google will call him out on.
Now note until now, we have a couple of circumstantially suspicious things...mostly his taxes and his lies, but nothing really rising to the level of the scandal that the left is desperately trying to find to bring him down.
But, there was one last thing on that list.....General Michael Flynn. Or as I think he's going to become known as "That scandal the left was desperately looking for to bring down Donald Trump"
That's right. It could for all the news attention and headlines over the last year, that the entire Russia Scandal boils down to nothing more than Michael Flynn.
The problem for Trump is that, its starting to look like "nothing more than Michael Flynn" is enough to remove him from office (at least if the Dems take control in 2018...which is looking more likely)
Ok, moving through the progression of the story:
Back when Trump first became president it came out his National Security Adviser had had a possibly inappropriate phone call with the Russian Ambassador. Flynn for his part claimed the phone call had only covered permissible subjects. As part of the Trump administration defense of him, Vice President Mike Pence went on TV and vouched for Flynn making only the single appropriate phoncall. Up to this point...not a big deal.
But as the story continued, over the next couple weeks it turned out that Flynn had made multiple phone calls to the Russian Ambassador, not just the one previously discovered. And oh yea, Flynn could no longer remember if it was possible the calls did cover inappropriate material after all. Which also meant that when VP Pence went on TV and said Flynn made one call and it was fine, VP Pence was lying.
Now luckily for Pence, it was not an intentional lie on his part....he was telling what he believed to be the truth. Flynn had lied to him. Which is a MAJOR problem.
A couple days after this part of the story came out, Flynn was fired by the Trump Administration for misleading the Vice President, which the entire administration claimed was news to them...even the President claimed to know nothing about it.
Now, normally this would be the end of the story....but it wasnt.
See the day after Flynn was fired it came out that President Trump had been told weeks before hand about the calls, and that Flynn had lied to Pence. Trump just chose not to do anything about it. Furthermore, Trump hadnt even bothered to notify Pence that he'd been lied to, Pence only discovering it by watching the story break on the evening news.
At this point, this starts to appear like a cover-up. The President intentionally not acting when some one brings forward evidence of possible wrong doing by a member of his staff.
By the way, adding to the appearance of cover up, the person who brought the president this information was Sally Yates, the acting attorney general, who Trump would fire days later for refusing to defend his ban on Muslims.
Now as a legal matter it should be noting Yates is within her rights not to defend the ban, and Trump is legally allowed to fire her for doing so, so nothing as it relates to Yates directly is outright illegal....it does however play into a larger picture of illegallity around Flynn.
Now it doesnt help, when every court thats heard the case so far, sided with Yates that Trump's rder was unconstitutional. Though again, as it relates to Yates directly, this looks no worse than Yates and Trump disagreeing, Trump legally firing her, and then having her be right. Embarrassing maybe,.. not illegal on its own.
But again, it does allow for the appearance that the ban was a convenient excuse to fire her, and that she was really fired for exposing Flynn. But again, this is speculation, not evidence of a crime. In fact if it wasn't for the Trump administrations crusade to destroy their own credibility on all things, Russia, the Bowling Green massacre, who really had the larger inaugural crowd, ect, this likely wouldn't even come up.
Anyways, Yates is fired, Flynn is not...at least until the story goes public. And even then Trump sends mixed messages, having Sean Spicer and Kellyanne Conway go out and say both that the president has full confidence in Flynn and doesnt think anything happened, and that Trump is very disturbed by the situation and is investigating. And then after Flynn leaves we are told it was voluntary and the president didnt want to fire him, the president demanded his resignation, and the president outright fired him....take your pick.
Now, this could be just a horrible set of miscommunication's, or its evidence of a cover up of a cover up,...basically they had to fire Flynn when the story went public, but never intended too so didnt have a single story to go with and everyone had to spitball it.
Fast forward a couple more weeks to the end of March, Flynn's gone....but the story still isnt over, as news breaks that when servicing as the national security adviser, was taking payments from Turkey to advance their interests.....which is literally the LAST thing you want out of your national security adviser. Trumps White House claimed no prior knowledge of these payments.
Making matters worse, it came out a few hours later that during the campaign Flynns lawyer had contacted the Trump Team to ask them if Flynn needed to register as a foreign agent due to his work for the Turkish, to which the Trump campaign told them basically they didnt care either way. And there goes the no prior knowledge excuse......more problematically, legally there was only one correct answer. Yes Flynn needs to register.
So yea, NOW we have an actual legal problem, as it appears the Trump campaign was perfectly fine breaking the law if it made things easier. And while this news didnt come out until the end of march, chronologically, this conversation about Turkey happened before the election....meaning it happened before every thing weve covered.
So basically we now know Trumps team (at least) had evidence Flynn had a major issue BEFORE they even won the election, let along before they won, before Flynn called the Russians, before Flynn lied to the VP, before Trump was told about it by Sally Yates and did nothing, and before they were eventually forced to fire Flynn, and before they lied both about not having prior knowledge of the Flynn/Russia talks or the Flynn/Turkey connection.
Ironic side not by the way, the day the Flynn/Turkey story broke, VP Pence was being interviewed and was asked about this. It was the first he'd heard of it. So apparently not much has changed in the Trump Administration as far as not telling the VP anything
At this point we seem to have very strong evidence of a scandal and a cover up. (though we still cant totally rule out Trump's team being comprised of the least competent people in human history)
Now to be fair to the Trump team....we havnt linked him to Russia. In fact we just linked him to Turkey. Well except for the part where the Turkish organization that Flynn was working for is cofounded and funded by a Russian. AWKWARD. Oh and we also discovered Flynn was paid for an appearance by the Russian government....even though his own military chain of command forbid him from taking the payment...he just lied to them about it.
So all of this led to Flynn making an offer for immunity in exchange for testimony...usually a play that only works if you have a bigger fish above you to hand over to be fried....in this case only Trump would qualify.....though the immunity deal was rejected. (meaning to be fair it could have been nothing more than a ploy of desperation on flynns part....though he likely thought he had something on Trump....just other people disagreed or already had it)
So at this point, Team Trump went on the defensive, claiming basically that everything that happened with Flynn was Obama's fault because when Flynn was vetted Obama was President and his people should have totally caught all this shit.
Now on its face there were just a few problems
1) Security Clearance isnt granted by either the outgoing or incoming administrations, its a non partisan group that does it....so the same people that did it for Obama do it for Trump
2) the final clearance was never granted
3) While final clearance is up to the bipartisan group, it is the transition team that is supposed to handle initial vetting.
4) The Obama administration fired Flynn for being bad at running an intelligence agency...the thing Trump was hiring him for.
But things got even worse when stories broke more or less simultaneously that the Trump Transition team had warned Flynn not to make the phone call to the Russian Ambassador in the first place, and that President Obama had personally advised Trump against hiring Flynn.
In other words, Trump WAS TOLD directly not to hire Flynn....shooting holes in the "Obama should have warned me" excuse and his campaign team knew enough about Flynn to warn Flynn not to make the calls....meaning there is no way Trump didnt at least know a little a bit about this when Sally Yates told him about it, in one of what it turned out was 3 different meetings with members of the White House to warn them to fire the guy.
What I'm getting at is, if we just look at the available facts, it seems Trump had multiple warnings that Michael Flynn should not be anywhere near classified information/anything important and chose not only to ignore them but to publicly deny any wrong doings....wrong doings that he knew had actually happened. That by the way, is the definition of a cover up.
Now I admit we dont know why Trump would do this....it seems completely illogical, unless he had some kind of insane confidence in Flynns not getting caught or his own ability to control the media. One things for sure, Flynn clearly impressed Trump enough for Trump to go to bat for him.
Now, I was about to publish this with a very different ending than what your about to see....lots of speculation about what comes next, will this rise to the level of cover up ect....but it turns out the news actually beat me too it. So everything from here down refers to things that have happened just in the last 4 hours or so.
Ok, so the one thing Mike Flynn has had going for him is that, supposedly the FBI investigated his conversations into the Russian Ambassador and his failures to disclose the Turkish/Russian payments and found nothing wrong. Of course the person who told us this was FBI director James Comey....who was just fired tonight by the president for making repeated factually incorrect statements about on going investigations.
Now we had no direct proof he was lying about Flynn not done anything wrong....though innocent people dont usually ask for or qualify for immunity deals, so Flynn trying to make one suggests he's guilty of something.
But then, at 924PM this evening, CNN broke the story that a grand jury had not only been called but was handing out subpoenas in relationship to Mike Flynn and Russia. That is a thing that does not happen unless they have at least plausible evidence that something very wrong happened.
In otherwords, we can now say Flynn definitely looks guilty of something. We dont know what yet. He took payments from Turkey that he didnt disclose, he took payments from Russia directly that he wasnt legally allowed to take and we know he had possibly illegal calls with the Russian ambassador. So it could be any of those. It could also be something new.
The big problem for Trump is this: all evidence suggests they knew about at least 2 of the existing possibilities (the turkish payments and the calls) and ignored and/or helped cover them up. So it seems very very likely the path to the end of this investigation will pass right though the center of the White House...and its anyones guess who might be left standing by the end.
So yes, when the history books are written, the entire "Trump is a Russian stooge" theory liberals have been pressing for nearly a year could boil down to just Michael Flynn. But just Michael Flynn seems poised to take down the White House.
Oh and not only that...but now that a federal prosecutor seems likely to be involved, it may not take Democrats taking control of the legislators to remove Trump if it comes out he committed some crimes while trying to cover this up. Even the congressional republicans would feel pressure to remove him quickly in that case.
After all Russian's did try to recruit Carter Page as an agent
Paul Manafort, Trumps original campaign manager, was working for the Russians.
Trump asked Russia to hack into Hillary's emails on national TV
His sons have a long record of talking about Russian investments in Trumps properties.
Trump wont release his tax returns...so who knows if hes getting Russian payouts
Trump lies about his relationship to Russia with things we already know about.
And, oh yea, Trumps first National Security Advisory was a foreign agent for the Russian government.
But, to be fair, many of these dont really seems to matter, nor are they indicative of any wrongdoing.
Carter Page: Was not successfully recruited by all accounts. May have accidentally passed along some information but being suckered isnt a crime.
Manafort: At the time, the information was he was working for the Ukrainians (eventually revealed to be a group backed by the Russians)....and he was fired when that came out. No evidence that Im aware of suggests Team Trump knew about this ahead of time. So in all fairness they appear to have handled this properly.
Hillarys Emails: Trump says stupid shit ALL THE TIME. No evidence as of now to suggest this was anything more than one of his regularly scheduled brain malfunctions
Russian investments in his projects: These are all true. They are also all legal and known....no real scandal here.
His taxes: Given that we know Russia is invested in the Trump Organization, there are only three reasons Trump wont release his taxes: He's a Russian puppet taking direct payouts from the Russians. He's massively in debt to the Russians and is therefore a blackmail risk. He's no where near as rich as he claims and his razor thin ego cant handle it. Now given Russia keeps trying to buy off his advisers, I think its safe to assume Trump's not directly on the Russian payroll...but either of the other two options is a possibility, and Trump being at risk for Blackmail would be a major national security problem.
Trump lies about things we already know about: As a single example Trump only admits to a single business deal in FL as his only interaction with Russia. But Russia also hosted the Miss Universe Pageant (which Trump owns). Now to be fair...no evidence of anything illegal, but it really doesnt help Trumps credibility that he lies about things a 30 second search on google will call him out on.
Now note until now, we have a couple of circumstantially suspicious things...mostly his taxes and his lies, but nothing really rising to the level of the scandal that the left is desperately trying to find to bring him down.
But, there was one last thing on that list.....General Michael Flynn. Or as I think he's going to become known as "That scandal the left was desperately looking for to bring down Donald Trump"
That's right. It could for all the news attention and headlines over the last year, that the entire Russia Scandal boils down to nothing more than Michael Flynn.
The problem for Trump is that, its starting to look like "nothing more than Michael Flynn" is enough to remove him from office (at least if the Dems take control in 2018...which is looking more likely)
Ok, moving through the progression of the story:
Back when Trump first became president it came out his National Security Adviser had had a possibly inappropriate phone call with the Russian Ambassador. Flynn for his part claimed the phone call had only covered permissible subjects. As part of the Trump administration defense of him, Vice President Mike Pence went on TV and vouched for Flynn making only the single appropriate phoncall. Up to this point...not a big deal.
But as the story continued, over the next couple weeks it turned out that Flynn had made multiple phone calls to the Russian Ambassador, not just the one previously discovered. And oh yea, Flynn could no longer remember if it was possible the calls did cover inappropriate material after all. Which also meant that when VP Pence went on TV and said Flynn made one call and it was fine, VP Pence was lying.
Now luckily for Pence, it was not an intentional lie on his part....he was telling what he believed to be the truth. Flynn had lied to him. Which is a MAJOR problem.
A couple days after this part of the story came out, Flynn was fired by the Trump Administration for misleading the Vice President, which the entire administration claimed was news to them...even the President claimed to know nothing about it.
Now, normally this would be the end of the story....but it wasnt.
See the day after Flynn was fired it came out that President Trump had been told weeks before hand about the calls, and that Flynn had lied to Pence. Trump just chose not to do anything about it. Furthermore, Trump hadnt even bothered to notify Pence that he'd been lied to, Pence only discovering it by watching the story break on the evening news.
At this point, this starts to appear like a cover-up. The President intentionally not acting when some one brings forward evidence of possible wrong doing by a member of his staff.
By the way, adding to the appearance of cover up, the person who brought the president this information was Sally Yates, the acting attorney general, who Trump would fire days later for refusing to defend his ban on Muslims.
Now as a legal matter it should be noting Yates is within her rights not to defend the ban, and Trump is legally allowed to fire her for doing so, so nothing as it relates to Yates directly is outright illegal....it does however play into a larger picture of illegallity around Flynn.
Now it doesnt help, when every court thats heard the case so far, sided with Yates that Trump's rder was unconstitutional. Though again, as it relates to Yates directly, this looks no worse than Yates and Trump disagreeing, Trump legally firing her, and then having her be right. Embarrassing maybe,.. not illegal on its own.
But again, it does allow for the appearance that the ban was a convenient excuse to fire her, and that she was really fired for exposing Flynn. But again, this is speculation, not evidence of a crime. In fact if it wasn't for the Trump administrations crusade to destroy their own credibility on all things, Russia, the Bowling Green massacre, who really had the larger inaugural crowd, ect, this likely wouldn't even come up.
Anyways, Yates is fired, Flynn is not...at least until the story goes public. And even then Trump sends mixed messages, having Sean Spicer and Kellyanne Conway go out and say both that the president has full confidence in Flynn and doesnt think anything happened, and that Trump is very disturbed by the situation and is investigating. And then after Flynn leaves we are told it was voluntary and the president didnt want to fire him, the president demanded his resignation, and the president outright fired him....take your pick.
Now, this could be just a horrible set of miscommunication's, or its evidence of a cover up of a cover up,...basically they had to fire Flynn when the story went public, but never intended too so didnt have a single story to go with and everyone had to spitball it.
Fast forward a couple more weeks to the end of March, Flynn's gone....but the story still isnt over, as news breaks that when servicing as the national security adviser, was taking payments from Turkey to advance their interests.....which is literally the LAST thing you want out of your national security adviser. Trumps White House claimed no prior knowledge of these payments.
Making matters worse, it came out a few hours later that during the campaign Flynns lawyer had contacted the Trump Team to ask them if Flynn needed to register as a foreign agent due to his work for the Turkish, to which the Trump campaign told them basically they didnt care either way. And there goes the no prior knowledge excuse......more problematically, legally there was only one correct answer. Yes Flynn needs to register.
So yea, NOW we have an actual legal problem, as it appears the Trump campaign was perfectly fine breaking the law if it made things easier. And while this news didnt come out until the end of march, chronologically, this conversation about Turkey happened before the election....meaning it happened before every thing weve covered.
So basically we now know Trumps team (at least) had evidence Flynn had a major issue BEFORE they even won the election, let along before they won, before Flynn called the Russians, before Flynn lied to the VP, before Trump was told about it by Sally Yates and did nothing, and before they were eventually forced to fire Flynn, and before they lied both about not having prior knowledge of the Flynn/Russia talks or the Flynn/Turkey connection.
Ironic side not by the way, the day the Flynn/Turkey story broke, VP Pence was being interviewed and was asked about this. It was the first he'd heard of it. So apparently not much has changed in the Trump Administration as far as not telling the VP anything
At this point we seem to have very strong evidence of a scandal and a cover up. (though we still cant totally rule out Trump's team being comprised of the least competent people in human history)
Now to be fair to the Trump team....we havnt linked him to Russia. In fact we just linked him to Turkey. Well except for the part where the Turkish organization that Flynn was working for is cofounded and funded by a Russian. AWKWARD. Oh and we also discovered Flynn was paid for an appearance by the Russian government....even though his own military chain of command forbid him from taking the payment...he just lied to them about it.
So all of this led to Flynn making an offer for immunity in exchange for testimony...usually a play that only works if you have a bigger fish above you to hand over to be fried....in this case only Trump would qualify.....though the immunity deal was rejected. (meaning to be fair it could have been nothing more than a ploy of desperation on flynns part....though he likely thought he had something on Trump....just other people disagreed or already had it)
So at this point, Team Trump went on the defensive, claiming basically that everything that happened with Flynn was Obama's fault because when Flynn was vetted Obama was President and his people should have totally caught all this shit.
Now on its face there were just a few problems
1) Security Clearance isnt granted by either the outgoing or incoming administrations, its a non partisan group that does it....so the same people that did it for Obama do it for Trump
2) the final clearance was never granted
3) While final clearance is up to the bipartisan group, it is the transition team that is supposed to handle initial vetting.
4) The Obama administration fired Flynn for being bad at running an intelligence agency...the thing Trump was hiring him for.
But things got even worse when stories broke more or less simultaneously that the Trump Transition team had warned Flynn not to make the phone call to the Russian Ambassador in the first place, and that President Obama had personally advised Trump against hiring Flynn.
In other words, Trump WAS TOLD directly not to hire Flynn....shooting holes in the "Obama should have warned me" excuse and his campaign team knew enough about Flynn to warn Flynn not to make the calls....meaning there is no way Trump didnt at least know a little a bit about this when Sally Yates told him about it, in one of what it turned out was 3 different meetings with members of the White House to warn them to fire the guy.
What I'm getting at is, if we just look at the available facts, it seems Trump had multiple warnings that Michael Flynn should not be anywhere near classified information/anything important and chose not only to ignore them but to publicly deny any wrong doings....wrong doings that he knew had actually happened. That by the way, is the definition of a cover up.
Now I admit we dont know why Trump would do this....it seems completely illogical, unless he had some kind of insane confidence in Flynns not getting caught or his own ability to control the media. One things for sure, Flynn clearly impressed Trump enough for Trump to go to bat for him.
Now, I was about to publish this with a very different ending than what your about to see....lots of speculation about what comes next, will this rise to the level of cover up ect....but it turns out the news actually beat me too it. So everything from here down refers to things that have happened just in the last 4 hours or so.
Ok, so the one thing Mike Flynn has had going for him is that, supposedly the FBI investigated his conversations into the Russian Ambassador and his failures to disclose the Turkish/Russian payments and found nothing wrong. Of course the person who told us this was FBI director James Comey....who was just fired tonight by the president for making repeated factually incorrect statements about on going investigations.
Now we had no direct proof he was lying about Flynn not done anything wrong....though innocent people dont usually ask for or qualify for immunity deals, so Flynn trying to make one suggests he's guilty of something.
But then, at 924PM this evening, CNN broke the story that a grand jury had not only been called but was handing out subpoenas in relationship to Mike Flynn and Russia. That is a thing that does not happen unless they have at least plausible evidence that something very wrong happened.
In otherwords, we can now say Flynn definitely looks guilty of something. We dont know what yet. He took payments from Turkey that he didnt disclose, he took payments from Russia directly that he wasnt legally allowed to take and we know he had possibly illegal calls with the Russian ambassador. So it could be any of those. It could also be something new.
The big problem for Trump is this: all evidence suggests they knew about at least 2 of the existing possibilities (the turkish payments and the calls) and ignored and/or helped cover them up. So it seems very very likely the path to the end of this investigation will pass right though the center of the White House...and its anyones guess who might be left standing by the end.
So yes, when the history books are written, the entire "Trump is a Russian stooge" theory liberals have been pressing for nearly a year could boil down to just Michael Flynn. But just Michael Flynn seems poised to take down the White House.
Oh and not only that...but now that a federal prosecutor seems likely to be involved, it may not take Democrats taking control of the legislators to remove Trump if it comes out he committed some crimes while trying to cover this up. Even the congressional republicans would feel pressure to remove him quickly in that case.
Saturday, April 29, 2017
Donald Trump, in his own words, the best words (AKA his AP interview).
So last week Donald Trump had an interview with the AP about being president.
Now I dont want to say it went bad or anything, but 100% of the survivors of the Titanic, Hindenburg, Chernobyl, Great Fire of London, Mount St. Helens and Pomei who were asked about it say they've never seen anything like it.
Which of course means, I totally had to read it......so buckle up folks as we go for a ride through the mind the President of the United States:
The first highlight:
"TRUMP: Yeah, it's funny: One of the best chemistries I had was with (German Chancellor Angela) Merkel.
(Crosstalk) AP: Really?
TRUMP: Chancellor Merkel.
TRUMP: And I guess somebody shouted out, "Shake her hand, shake her hand," you know. But I never heard it. But I had already shaken her hand four times. You know, because we were together for a long time.
AP: Did you expect you would have good chemistry with her?
TRUMP: No. Because, um, I'm at odds on, you know, the NATO payments and I'm at odds on immigration. We had unbelievable chemistry. And people have given me credit for having great chemistry with all of the leaders, including el-Sissi. ...
TRUMP: So it was a great thing to see that happen."
Ok, so on its face this doesnt seem that bad.....maybe Trump and Merkel really do get along well, and hes right about all the reasons they shouldnt. But then there is the bit about shaking her hand.
Now you may remember Trump took some heat for not shaking Merkel's hand during their meeting. While I'm the first to admit this is a stupid ass story, look at his explanation.
To be fair, the first part sounds perfectly reasonable....someone said "shake her hand" and Merkel heard it and he didnt....no big deal. But this is Trump so he had to get just a bit crazy with it:
"But I had already shaken her hand four times. You know, because we were together for a long time."
Now if I was the AP, I would have had the following questions:
1) So what is the limit on number of times you will shake someones hand? Is it a per visit or life time limit?
I mean you stopped shaking Hillary's hand during the debates, so I'm assuming its a lifetime limit?
Actually lets hope not. After all, I found at least 4 different pictures of you shaking hands with Jared Kushner, your son in law. And assuming you followed tradition, you shook his hand at the wedding too, when you gave away your daughter. Which would mean, he appears to be over the handshake limit.......is it possible one of those times you just didnt recognize him?
2) How long is the interval between hand shakes? See I understand you probably shook Chancellor Merkel's hand in private when you first met, but when were the other 3 times?
Did you randomly stop the conversation to grab her hand and shake it again? you know maybe ever hour, on the hour? Given you were together for a long time and all...was it every time you entered a room together? and if so, did she know she was approaching your hand shake limit?
Like I said, he'd have been fine just going with the "I didnt hear it" excuse...its actually believable and probably true,
Moving on to highlight #2
"AP: Do you feel like you've been able to apply that kind of a relationship to your dealings with Congress as well?
TRUMP: I have great relationships with Congress. I think we're doing very well and I think we have a great foundation for future things. We're going to be applying, I shouldn't tell you this, but we're going to be announcing, probably on Wednesday, tax reform. And it's — we've worked on it long and hard. And you've got to understand, I've only been here now 93 days, 92 days. President Obama took 17 months to do Obamacare. I've been here 92 days but I've only been working on the health care, you know I had to get like a little bit of grounding right? Health care started after 30 day(s), so I've been working on health care for 60 days. ...You know, we're very close. And it's a great plan, you know, we have to get it approved."
"AP: Is it this deal that's between the Tuesday Group and the Freedom Caucus, is that the deal you're looking at?
TRUMP: So the Republican Party has various groups, all great people. They're great people. But some are moderate, some are very conservative. The Democrats don't seem to have that nearly as much. You know the Democrats have, they don't have that. The Republicans do have that. And I think it's fine. But you know there's a pretty vast area in there. And I have a great relationship with all of them. Now, we have government not closing. I think we'll be in great shape on that. It's going very well. Obviously, that takes precedent.
AP: That takes precedent over health care? For next week?
TRUMP: Yeah, sure. Next week. Because the hundred days is just an artificial barrier. The press keeps talking about the hundred days. But we've done a lot. You have a list of things. I don't have to read it."
There you have it folks, confirmation from the horse's ass that he didnt read the job requirements before applying.
"AP: You mean the responsibility of it, or do you mean —
TRUMP: Number One, there's great responsibility. When it came time to, as an example, send out the 59 missiles, the Tomahawks in Syria. I'm saying to myself, "You know, this is more than just like, 79 (sic) missiles."
So was it 59 or 79 Missiles? Maybe this is why those orders are so big, cause you have to keep changing them..."Send 59 missiles....er I mean 79 missiles" "Send the Carl Vinson South and East to North Korea.....err wait I meant North and West"
"This is risk that's involved, because if the missile goes off and goes in a city or goes in a civilian area — you know, the boats were hundreds of miles away — and if this missile goes off and lands in the middle of a town or a hamlet .... every decision is much harder than you'd normally make.(unintelligible) ... This is involving death and life and so many things. ... So it's far more responsibility. (unintelligible) ..."
Now you choked on a piece of word salad here, so maybe I'm not quite understanding you, but it sounds like you also just learned that missiles can occasionally miss....and also (and more troubling) that they arnt just pushed off the sides of the ship......like seriously man, maybe we need to appoint Barron your "special military adviser"...I mean he's 11...he plays video games. He understands these concepts and I'm sure hed love to explain how all this works to you.
"AP: You've talked a little bit about the way that you've brought some business skills into the office. Is there anything from your business background that just doesn't translate into the presidency, that just simply is not applicable to this job?
TRUMP: Well in business, you don't necessarily need heart, whereas here, almost everything affects people. So if you're talking about health care — you have health care in business but you're trying to just negotiate a good price on health care, et cetera, et cetera. You're providing health. This is (unintelligible). Here, everything, pretty much everything you do in government, involves heart, whereas in business, most things don't involve heart.
AP: What's that switch been like for you?
TRUMP: In fact, in business you're actually better off without it."
Actually....credit where its due here. Donald Trump is 1000% right. The entire point of a business is to make money, they are supposed to be completely and utterly amoral. They are not supposed to give a damn about anything except what they need to do to make money, and should only make concessions to decency/moral all thing things Trump called "heart" if it helps profits.
Now of course this is is also the reason why Donald Trump is a horrible president, and why he backs down on literally every single thing he says and position he takes......hes running the place like a business...where you say what you need to say in the moment to make a buck, even if its counter to what you told the last guy to make a buck.
Now I dont want to say it went bad or anything, but 100% of the survivors of the Titanic, Hindenburg, Chernobyl, Great Fire of London, Mount St. Helens and Pomei who were asked about it say they've never seen anything like it.
Which of course means, I totally had to read it......so buckle up folks as we go for a ride through the mind the President of the United States:
The first highlight:
"TRUMP: Yeah, it's funny: One of the best chemistries I had was with (German Chancellor Angela) Merkel.
(Crosstalk) AP: Really?
TRUMP: Chancellor Merkel.
TRUMP: And I guess somebody shouted out, "Shake her hand, shake her hand," you know. But I never heard it. But I had already shaken her hand four times. You know, because we were together for a long time.
AP: Did you expect you would have good chemistry with her?
TRUMP: No. Because, um, I'm at odds on, you know, the NATO payments and I'm at odds on immigration. We had unbelievable chemistry. And people have given me credit for having great chemistry with all of the leaders, including el-Sissi. ...
TRUMP: So it was a great thing to see that happen."
Ok, so on its face this doesnt seem that bad.....maybe Trump and Merkel really do get along well, and hes right about all the reasons they shouldnt. But then there is the bit about shaking her hand.
Now you may remember Trump took some heat for not shaking Merkel's hand during their meeting. While I'm the first to admit this is a stupid ass story, look at his explanation.
To be fair, the first part sounds perfectly reasonable....someone said "shake her hand" and Merkel heard it and he didnt....no big deal. But this is Trump so he had to get just a bit crazy with it:
"But I had already shaken her hand four times. You know, because we were together for a long time."
Now if I was the AP, I would have had the following questions:
1) So what is the limit on number of times you will shake someones hand? Is it a per visit or life time limit?
I mean you stopped shaking Hillary's hand during the debates, so I'm assuming its a lifetime limit?
Actually lets hope not. After all, I found at least 4 different pictures of you shaking hands with Jared Kushner, your son in law. And assuming you followed tradition, you shook his hand at the wedding too, when you gave away your daughter. Which would mean, he appears to be over the handshake limit.......is it possible one of those times you just didnt recognize him?
2) How long is the interval between hand shakes? See I understand you probably shook Chancellor Merkel's hand in private when you first met, but when were the other 3 times?
Did you randomly stop the conversation to grab her hand and shake it again? you know maybe ever hour, on the hour? Given you were together for a long time and all...was it every time you entered a room together? and if so, did she know she was approaching your hand shake limit?
Like I said, he'd have been fine just going with the "I didnt hear it" excuse...its actually believable and probably true,
Moving on to highlight #2
"AP: Do you feel like you've been able to apply that kind of a relationship to your dealings with Congress as well?
TRUMP: I have great relationships with Congress. I think we're doing very well and I think we have a great foundation for future things. We're going to be applying, I shouldn't tell you this, but we're going to be announcing, probably on Wednesday, tax reform. And it's — we've worked on it long and hard. And you've got to understand, I've only been here now 93 days, 92 days. President Obama took 17 months to do Obamacare. I've been here 92 days but I've only been working on the health care, you know I had to get like a little bit of grounding right? Health care started after 30 day(s), so I've been working on health care for 60 days. ...You know, we're very close. And it's a great plan, you know, we have to get it approved."
So Donald Trump's claim is "Look how great the healthcare plan we were forced to pull because it cant pass the GOP controlled house is"? Or does he just want credit for it failure.....two failures actually because despite being "very very close" the House just pulled a second vote on it cause no one likes it.
"AP: Is it this deal that's between the Tuesday Group and the Freedom Caucus, is that the deal you're looking at?
TRUMP: So the Republican Party has various groups, all great people. They're great people. But some are moderate, some are very conservative. The Democrats don't seem to have that nearly as much. You know the Democrats have, they don't have that. The Republicans do have that. And I think it's fine. But you know there's a pretty vast area in there. And I have a great relationship with all of them. Now, we have government not closing. I think we'll be in great shape on that. It's going very well. Obviously, that takes precedent.
AP: That takes precedent over health care? For next week?
TRUMP: Yeah, sure. Next week. Because the hundred days is just an artificial barrier. The press keeps talking about the hundred days. But we've done a lot. You have a list of things. I don't have to read it."
So, what exactly is "that?" I get the Dem's dont have "that" and the Republicans do have "that" but I still dont know what "that" is. I assume "that" is something we want from context...but really what is "that"? Just saying it reminds me a bit of this (guy on the left is the AP, the one on the right is Trump)
"AP: You did put out though, as a candidate, you put out a 100-day plan. Do you feel like you should be held accountable to that plan?
TRUMP: Somebody, yeah, somebody put out the concept of a hundred-day plan. But yeah. Well, I'm mostly there on most items. Go over the items, and I'll talk to you ...
(Crosstalk.)
TRUMP: But things change. There has to be flexibility. Let me give you an example. President Xi, we have a, like, a really great relationship. For me to call him a currency manipulator and then say, "By the way, I'd like you to solve the North Korean problem," doesn't work. So you have to have a certain flexibility, Number One. Number Two, from the time I took office till now, you know, it's a very exact thing. It's not like generalities. Do you want a Coke or anything?"
Translation: Yea, someone put out a plan.....maybe it was me....maybe it wasnt. Have you asked anyone else if the 100 day plan belongs to them? like is my name on the thing? (NOTE: this is not the only or even most detailed plan Trump laid out....I just didnt think anyone wanted to see a 24 minute speech)
AP: So in terms of the 100-day plan that you did put out during the campaign, do you feel, though, that people should hold you accountable to this in terms of judging success?
TRUMP: No, because much of the foundation's been laid. Things came up. I'll give you an example. I didn't put Supreme Court judge on the 100 (day) plan, and I got a Supreme Court judge.
Wait....Trump didnt put getting a Supreme Court Judge on the 100 day plan? I'm pretty sure this is breaking news to literally everyone, Trump supporters and detractors....cause you know we all thought that was one of the major goals of his campaign.
I guess its shame Trump never posted his 100 day plan to a website or anything, so we cant check that or anything....oh wait.
"AP: I think it's on there.
TRUMP: I don't know. ...
AP: "Begin the process of selecting." You actually exceeded on this one. This says, "Begin the process of selecting a replacement."
It seem's unlike President Trump, the AP actually read his 100 day plan......thats gotta be awkward.
But hey thats what happens when you elect a trained teleprompter monkey as President....he says whatever is on the screen, but it doesnt mean he understands it.
"TRUMP: That's the biggest thing I've done.
AP: Do you consider that your biggest success?
TRUMP: Well, I — first of all I think he's a great man. I think he will be a great, great justice of the Supreme Court. I have always heard that the selection and the affirmation of a Supreme Court judge is the biggest thing a president can do. Don't forget, he could be there for 40 years. ... He's a young man. I've always heard that that's the biggest thing. Now, I would say that defense is the biggest thing. You know, to be honest, there are a number of things. But I've always heard that the highest calling is the nomination of a Supreme Court justice. I've done one in my first 70 days."
Next up:
"AP: You did put out though, as a candidate, you put out a 100-day plan. Do you feel like you should be held accountable to that plan?
TRUMP: Somebody, yeah, somebody put out the concept of a hundred-day plan. But yeah. Well, I'm mostly there on most items. Go over the items, and I'll talk to you ...
(Crosstalk.)
TRUMP: But things change. There has to be flexibility. Let me give you an example. President Xi, we have a, like, a really great relationship. For me to call him a currency manipulator and then say, "By the way, I'd like you to solve the North Korean problem," doesn't work. So you have to have a certain flexibility, Number One. Number Two, from the time I took office till now, you know, it's a very exact thing. It's not like generalities. Do you want a Coke or anything?"
Translation: Yea, someone put out a plan.....maybe it was me....maybe it wasnt. Have you asked anyone else if the 100 day plan belongs to them? like is my name on the thing? (NOTE: this is not the only or even most detailed plan Trump laid out....I just didnt think anyone wanted to see a 24 minute speech)
Oh...well...shit. Ok look things change you say. I said a bunch of things about stuff I didnt understand....and now I kinda get it. You cant expect me to hold to stupid shit I said previously...I mean.....ok shit....you want a coke? or just anything to change the subject.
Except, being Trump, he couldnt take his own escape hatch....and wound up face down in a word salad
"TRUMP: And the media, some of them get it, in all fairness. But you know some of them either don't get it, in which case they're very stupid people, or they just don't want to say it. You know because of a couple of them said, "He didn't call them a currency manipulator." Well, for two reasons. Number One, he's not, since my time. You know, very specific formula. You would think it's like generalities, it's not. They have — they've actually — their currency's gone up. So it's a very, very specific formula. And I said, "How badly have they been," ... they said, "Since you got to office they have not manipulated their currency." That's Number One, but much more important, they are working with us on North Korea. Now maybe that'll work out or maybe it won't. Can you imagine? "
So media gets it....except when they dont. Also China stopped manipulating their currency the day I came into office....they told me so, and they wouldnt lie. And even if they did it doesnt matter cause they are helping us with North Korea...except they might not be...but can you imagine if they were?
Also what the fuck happened to Number 2? just saying, we know what reason Number 1 was...but where did Number 2 go?
We will never find out, because they moved on to the next subject (or back on to the point more accurately)
Except, being Trump, he couldnt take his own escape hatch....and wound up face down in a word salad
"TRUMP: And the media, some of them get it, in all fairness. But you know some of them either don't get it, in which case they're very stupid people, or they just don't want to say it. You know because of a couple of them said, "He didn't call them a currency manipulator." Well, for two reasons. Number One, he's not, since my time. You know, very specific formula. You would think it's like generalities, it's not. They have — they've actually — their currency's gone up. So it's a very, very specific formula. And I said, "How badly have they been," ... they said, "Since you got to office they have not manipulated their currency." That's Number One, but much more important, they are working with us on North Korea. Now maybe that'll work out or maybe it won't. Can you imagine? "
So media gets it....except when they dont. Also China stopped manipulating their currency the day I came into office....they told me so, and they wouldnt lie. And even if they did it doesnt matter cause they are helping us with North Korea...except they might not be...but can you imagine if they were?
Also what the fuck happened to Number 2? just saying, we know what reason Number 1 was...but where did Number 2 go?
We will never find out, because they moved on to the next subject (or back on to the point more accurately)
AP: So in terms of the 100-day plan that you did put out during the campaign, do you feel, though, that people should hold you accountable to this in terms of judging success?
TRUMP: No, because much of the foundation's been laid. Things came up. I'll give you an example. I didn't put Supreme Court judge on the 100 (day) plan, and I got a Supreme Court judge.
Wait....Trump didnt put getting a Supreme Court Judge on the 100 day plan? I'm pretty sure this is breaking news to literally everyone, Trump supporters and detractors....cause you know we all thought that was one of the major goals of his campaign.
I guess its shame Trump never posted his 100 day plan to a website or anything, so we cant check that or anything....oh wait.
"AP: I think it's on there.
TRUMP: I don't know. ...
AP: "Begin the process of selecting." You actually exceeded on this one. This says, "Begin the process of selecting a replacement."
It seem's unlike President Trump, the AP actually read his 100 day plan......thats gotta be awkward.
But hey thats what happens when you elect a trained teleprompter monkey as President....he says whatever is on the screen, but it doesnt mean he understands it.
"TRUMP: That's the biggest thing I've done.
AP: Do you consider that your biggest success?
TRUMP: Well, I — first of all I think he's a great man. I think he will be a great, great justice of the Supreme Court. I have always heard that the selection and the affirmation of a Supreme Court judge is the biggest thing a president can do. Don't forget, he could be there for 40 years. ... He's a young man. I've always heard that that's the biggest thing. Now, I would say that defense is the biggest thing. You know, to be honest, there are a number of things. But I've always heard that the highest calling is the nomination of a Supreme Court justice. I've done one in my first 70 days."
So....appointing a supreme court judge is the biggest thing you can do? except it not....its defense? Which oddly enough is a thing you didn't do (your defense budget was tossed out during the negotiations to keep the government open). Though credit to Trump for catching this 3 seconds after it left his mouth so he can claim that the thing he actually did really is the most important thing...never mind that thing he just said was more important that he failed at......
Moving on
Moving on
"AP: Can I ask you, over your first 100 days — you're not quite there yet — how do you feel like the office has changed you?
TRUMP: Well the one thing I would say — and I say this to people — I never realized how big it was. Everything's so (unintelligible) like, you know the orders are so massive. I was talking to — "
TRUMP: Well the one thing I would say — and I say this to people — I never realized how big it was. Everything's so (unintelligible) like, you know the orders are so massive. I was talking to — "
"AP: You mean the responsibility of it, or do you mean —
TRUMP: Number One, there's great responsibility. When it came time to, as an example, send out the 59 missiles, the Tomahawks in Syria. I'm saying to myself, "You know, this is more than just like, 79 (sic) missiles."
So was it 59 or 79 Missiles? Maybe this is why those orders are so big, cause you have to keep changing them..."Send 59 missiles....er I mean 79 missiles" "Send the Carl Vinson South and East to North Korea.....err wait I meant North and West"
Or do you think missiles operate like Airlines? where they have to overbook them, just in case some of those missles dont make the launch tubes?
"This is death that's involved," because people could have been killed."
Yes.....this is generally how missiles work (ask any 3rd grader if you dont believe me)....and its kinda terrifying you didnt know this until AFTER you took the job to be in charge of them.
"This is death that's involved," because people could have been killed."
Yes.....this is generally how missiles work (ask any 3rd grader if you dont believe me)....and its kinda terrifying you didnt know this until AFTER you took the job to be in charge of them.
Now you choked on a piece of word salad here, so maybe I'm not quite understanding you, but it sounds like you also just learned that missiles can occasionally miss....and also (and more troubling) that they arnt just pushed off the sides of the ship......like seriously man, maybe we need to appoint Barron your "special military adviser"...I mean he's 11...he plays video games. He understands these concepts and I'm sure hed love to explain how all this works to you.
"..The financial cost of everything is so massive, every agency. This is thousands of times bigger, the United States, than the biggest company in the world. The second-largest company in the world is the Defense Department. The third-largest company in the world is Social Security. The fourth-largest — you know, you go down the list.
AP: Right."
AP: Right."
I love the AP reply here. "Yes Mr. Trump you have correctly stated how big the government is, as taught to every 5th graders in US civics"
TRUMP. It's massive. And every agency is, like, bigger than any company. So you know, I really just see the bigness of it all, but also the responsibility. And the human responsibility. You know, the human life that's involved in some of the decisions.
"So Donnie what did you learn in kindergarten today?"
"I learned the government is big mommy.....and important."
"So Donnie what did you learn in kindergarten today?"
"I learned the government is big mommy.....and important."
Moving on to the next highlight
"AP: You've talked a little bit about the way that you've brought some business skills into the office. Is there anything from your business background that just doesn't translate into the presidency, that just simply is not applicable to this job?
TRUMP: Well in business, you don't necessarily need heart, whereas here, almost everything affects people. So if you're talking about health care — you have health care in business but you're trying to just negotiate a good price on health care, et cetera, et cetera. You're providing health. This is (unintelligible). Here, everything, pretty much everything you do in government, involves heart, whereas in business, most things don't involve heart.
AP: What's that switch been like for you?
TRUMP: In fact, in business you're actually better off without it."
Actually....credit where its due here. Donald Trump is 1000% right. The entire point of a business is to make money, they are supposed to be completely and utterly amoral. They are not supposed to give a damn about anything except what they need to do to make money, and should only make concessions to decency/moral all thing things Trump called "heart" if it helps profits.
Now of course this is is also the reason why Donald Trump is a horrible president, and why he backs down on literally every single thing he says and position he takes......hes running the place like a business...where you say what you need to say in the moment to make a buck, even if its counter to what you told the last guy to make a buck.
Which incidentally explains the next highlight
AP: Obviously, that's going to come in a week where you're going to be running up against the deadline for keeping the government open. If you get a bill on your desk that does not include funding for the wall, will you sign it?
TRUMP: I don't know yet. People want the border wall. My base definitely wants the border wall, my base really wants it — you've been to many of the rallies. OK, the thing they want more than anything is the wall. My base, which is a big base; I think my base is 45 percent. You know, it's funny. The Democrats, they have a big advantage in the electoral college. Big, big, big advantage. I've always said the popular vote would be a lot easier than the electoral college. The electoral college — but it's a whole different campaign (unintelligible). The electoral college is very difficult for a Republican to win, and I will tell you, the people want to see it. They want to see the wall, they want to see security. Now, it just came out that they're 73 percent down. ... That's a tremendous achievement. ... Look at this, in 100 days, that down to the lowest in 17 years and it's going lower. Now, people aren't coming because they know they're not going to get through, and there isn't crime. You know the migration up to the border is horrible for women, you know that? (Unintelligible.) Now, much of that's stopped because they can't get through.
[...]
AP: But, just trying to nail you down on it one more time, will you sign a spending bill if it doesn't have —
TRUMP: I don't want to comment. I just don't know yet. I mean, I have to see what's going on. I really do. But the wall's a very important thing to — not only my base, but to the people. And even if it wasn't, I mean I'll do things that aren't necessarily popular. ... The wall is very important to stopping drugs.
AP: Obviously, that's going to come in a week where you're going to be running up against the deadline for keeping the government open. If you get a bill on your desk that does not include funding for the wall, will you sign it?
TRUMP: I don't know yet. People want the border wall. My base definitely wants the border wall, my base really wants it — you've been to many of the rallies. OK, the thing they want more than anything is the wall. My base, which is a big base; I think my base is 45 percent. You know, it's funny. The Democrats, they have a big advantage in the electoral college. Big, big, big advantage. I've always said the popular vote would be a lot easier than the electoral college. The electoral college — but it's a whole different campaign (unintelligible). The electoral college is very difficult for a Republican to win, and I will tell you, the people want to see it. They want to see the wall, they want to see security. Now, it just came out that they're 73 percent down. ... That's a tremendous achievement. ... Look at this, in 100 days, that down to the lowest in 17 years and it's going lower. Now, people aren't coming because they know they're not going to get through, and there isn't crime. You know the migration up to the border is horrible for women, you know that? (Unintelligible.) Now, much of that's stopped because they can't get through.
[...]
AP: But, just trying to nail you down on it one more time, will you sign a spending bill if it doesn't have —
TRUMP: I don't want to comment. I just don't know yet. I mean, I have to see what's going on. I really do. But the wall's a very important thing to — not only my base, but to the people. And even if it wasn't, I mean I'll do things that aren't necessarily popular. ... The wall is very important to stopping drugs.
So basically Trump thinks the wall is fantastic, and its what his base wants, look how great its going to be. But of course hes not going to commit to funding it, what are you crazy? that might hurt his bottom line (IE approval ratings/reelection chances) somewhere else. Thats how business works....I lied to them, now I might lie to you...or them again. Whatever helps the bottom line.
And next hightlight
"TRUMP: They had a quote from me that NATO's obsolete. But they didn't say why it was obsolete. I was on Wolf Blitzer, very fair interview, the first time I was ever asked about NATO, because I wasn't in government. People don't go around asking about NATO if I'm building a building in Manhattan, right? So they asked me, Wolf ... asked me about NATO, and I said two things. NATO's obsolete — not knowing much about NATO, now I know a lot about NATO — NATO is obsolete, and I said, "And the reason it's obsolete is because of the fact they don't focus on terrorism." You know, back when they did NATO there was no such thing as terrorism."
So this is what Trump's 3 or 4th time hiding behind the "Hey you cant hold me accountable for the things I said in the campaign because I'm a fucking idiot who didnt know what I was talking about and am incapable of hiring people who can teach me" excuse?
And really...I dont see much improvement here, as Donald Trump doesnt think Terrorism is older than 70 years or so (when NATO was first founded).
Next up this highlight:
"AP: Should Americans who are serving in the military expect that you are going to increase troop numbers in the Middle East to fight ISIS?
TRUMP: No, not much.
AP: In terms of the strategy, though, that you have accepted, it sounds like, from the generals —
TRUMP: Well, they've also accepted my strategy.
AP: Does that involve more troops on the ground, it sounds like?
TRUMP: Not many.
AP: So a small increase?
TRUMP: It could be an increase, then an increase. But not many more. I want to do the job, but not many more. ... This is an important story. I've done a lot. I've done more than any other president in the first 100 days and I think the first 100 days is an artificial barrier. And I'm scheduled ... the foundations have been set to do some great things. With foreign countries. Look at, look at President Xi. I mean ..."
"TRUMP: They had a quote from me that NATO's obsolete. But they didn't say why it was obsolete. I was on Wolf Blitzer, very fair interview, the first time I was ever asked about NATO, because I wasn't in government. People don't go around asking about NATO if I'm building a building in Manhattan, right? So they asked me, Wolf ... asked me about NATO, and I said two things. NATO's obsolete — not knowing much about NATO, now I know a lot about NATO — NATO is obsolete, and I said, "And the reason it's obsolete is because of the fact they don't focus on terrorism." You know, back when they did NATO there was no such thing as terrorism."
So this is what Trump's 3 or 4th time hiding behind the "Hey you cant hold me accountable for the things I said in the campaign because I'm a fucking idiot who didnt know what I was talking about and am incapable of hiring people who can teach me" excuse?
And really...I dont see much improvement here, as Donald Trump doesnt think Terrorism is older than 70 years or so (when NATO was first founded).
Next up this highlight:
"AP: Should Americans who are serving in the military expect that you are going to increase troop numbers in the Middle East to fight ISIS?
TRUMP: No, not much.
AP: In terms of the strategy, though, that you have accepted, it sounds like, from the generals —
TRUMP: Well, they've also accepted my strategy.
AP: Does that involve more troops on the ground, it sounds like?
TRUMP: Not many.
AP: So a small increase?
TRUMP: It could be an increase, then an increase. But not many more. I want to do the job, but not many more. ... This is an important story. I've done a lot. I've done more than any other president in the first 100 days and I think the first 100 days is an artificial barrier. And I'm scheduled ... the foundations have been set to do some great things. With foreign countries. Look at, look at President Xi. I mean ..."
So what do "President Xi" and the "first 100 days" have to do with troop numbers in the middle east?
Not a god damn thing.....problem is, like a good trained parrot, Trump memorized his script...and hes incapable of devating from it. So when pressed on an issue he has no choice but to reset to the scripted lines he's been trained to repeat. Well its either that or a word salad....
Speaking of, next and final highlight
TRUMP: I think (I) can to an extent. But there's a, there's a basic hard-line core that you can't break though, OK, that you can't break through. There's a hard-line group you can't break through, you can't. It's sad. You can't. Look, I met with Congressman Cummings and I really liked him, a lot. Elijah Cummings (of Maryland). I really liked him a lot. And during the conversation because we have a very strong mutual feeling on drug prices. He came to see me, at my invitation, because I saw him talking about, he came to see me about drug prices because drug prices are ridiculous. And I am going to get them way, way, way down and he liked that. He said you will be the greatest president. He said you will be, in front of five, six people, he said you will be the greatest president in the history of this country.
AP: He disputed that slightly.
TRUMP: That's what he said. I mean, what can I tell you?
AP: Yeah.
TRUMP: There's six people sitting here. What did he, what, what do you mean by slightly?
AP: He said, he said that he felt like you could be a great president if and then —
TRUMP: Well he said, you'll be the greatest president in the history of, but you know what, I'll take that also, but that you could be. But he said, will be the greatest president but I would also accept the other. In other words, if you do your job, but I accept that. Then I watched him interviewed and it was like he never even was here. It's incredible. I watched him interviewed a week later and it's like he was never in my office. And you can even say that.
Not a god damn thing.....problem is, like a good trained parrot, Trump memorized his script...and hes incapable of devating from it. So when pressed on an issue he has no choice but to reset to the scripted lines he's been trained to repeat. Well its either that or a word salad....
Speaking of, next and final highlight
TRUMP: I think (I) can to an extent. But there's a, there's a basic hard-line core that you can't break though, OK, that you can't break through. There's a hard-line group you can't break through, you can't. It's sad. You can't. Look, I met with Congressman Cummings and I really liked him, a lot. Elijah Cummings (of Maryland). I really liked him a lot. And during the conversation because we have a very strong mutual feeling on drug prices. He came to see me, at my invitation, because I saw him talking about, he came to see me about drug prices because drug prices are ridiculous. And I am going to get them way, way, way down and he liked that. He said you will be the greatest president. He said you will be, in front of five, six people, he said you will be the greatest president in the history of this country.
AP: He disputed that slightly.
TRUMP: That's what he said. I mean, what can I tell you?
AP: Yeah.
TRUMP: There's six people sitting here. What did he, what, what do you mean by slightly?
AP: He said, he said that he felt like you could be a great president if and then —
TRUMP: Well he said, you'll be the greatest president in the history of, but you know what, I'll take that also, but that you could be. But he said, will be the greatest president but I would also accept the other. In other words, if you do your job, but I accept that. Then I watched him interviewed and it was like he never even was here. It's incredible. I watched him interviewed a week later and it's like he was never in my office. And you can even say that.
So, even knowing what Trump was talking about....and what Cummings actually said (which is if Trump abandoned all his policies he had the potential to be a great president)...and I still cant make sense of anything Trump said in that last paragraph. "You could be" what exactly? what is "the other" youd "accept" and "if you do your job"what happens exactly? though I guess Im glad you accept the thing not stated. Also what can you "even say that"?
I dont think there is a complete sentence or thought ANYWHERE in that bit.
I dont think there is a complete sentence or thought ANYWHERE in that bit.
And well thats symbolic of this entire interview isnt it.....at the end of the day we now have a lunatic with "all the best words" incoherently babbling them out running the country....and if you dont believe that, you wernt paying attention when he told you in this interview more than once, thats exactly what hes doing.
Sunday, April 9, 2017
"McConnelled": the Supreme Court Gerrymander
So if you follow the news, you might be forgiven for thinking Mitch McConnell is an evil genius.
So back when Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia died, Democrat Barack Obama was President of the United States with about a year left in his term.
Yet, when Scalia's replacement was finally confirmed, it was done by the new Republican President Donald Trump.
As many have pointed out, this seems well odd. Or to use the democrats term for it....this seems like stealing a supreme court seat from the Democrats to be filled by a Republican.
And it is.....even the man responsible for doing it, Mitch McConnell would agree to that.
Granted McConnell would feed you a bullshit line about needing to uphold the balance of the court (Scalia being a conservative and all, and Obama likely to have appointed a liberal), but he'd agree on the principle.
But what makes Mitch McConnell seem like an evil genius is that, in getting Neil Gorsuch (Donald Trump's nominee) confirmed to the Supreme Court, he destroyed the Filibuster for Supreme Court nominees, preventing the Democrats from being able to block the nomination indefinitly, as McConnell himself had done to Merrick Garland (Obama's nominee who wasnt confirmed).
In fact this is the interpretation many of the mainstream, right wing and left wing media are all taking (granted the Right wing points out its genius, and the left calls it evil but still again they agree on the core idea). Per the media, Mitch McConnell is the man who prevented the president of the opposition party from filling a supreme court seat he was constitutionally allowed to fill and turned that seat over to his parties president to fill it instead.....while also destroying the mechanism the opposition party could use to do the same thing to his party.
There is however a small problem with this interpretation: It's not accurate.
Some parts of it are indisputable: McConnell DID prevent Obama from making an appointment...and held the seat open until his party held the White House.
McConnell also nuked the filibuster.
The problem is....these two things are not the same, nor really connected.
See the filibuster was a method for the minority party to prevent anything from happening.
However at the time Garland was nominated by Obama, the Republicans were the majority party.
So to stop Garland, they didnt filibuster his nomination.
Instead they just flat out refused to hold vote (or even a hearing) on the man.
Now they did this, because the truth is, they couldnt come up with a politically viable reason to vote against him if he came up to a vote. And as McConnell repeated pointed out, this all happened in an election year.
Which was part of the problem....if Republicans voted for an Obama nominee they were afraid they would be used against them in election ads. At the same time, if they failed to vote for a obviously qualified nominee it would be used against them in election ads.
So no matter how they voted, they believed they would get screwed. So they found a way out. Dont vote. Its a bit harder to hold people accountable for things they didnt do, a belief, that given the GOP gained the white house while holding the senate was seemingly verified.
Now this may all seem irrelevant...after all according to most media reporting, this cant happen again...McConnell completed his genius plan by nuking the filibuster and getting Gorsuch on the court.
Except again....the Filibuster is a tactic where the minority stops a vote from happening.
Whereas McConnell invented a new tactic where the majority stops a vote from happening.
And well, quite frankly there is nothing preventing it from happening again.
Assuming anyone who reads this blog is a conservative and thrilled with how Trump got to put a right winger on the court, let me ask you a question: If the democrats take the senate in 2018 and their's another vacancy or two on the Supreme Court, what exactly do you think the chances are Donald Trump is going to get to fill those?
Thanks to Mitch McConnell new invention, its basically zero. Democrats would be guilty of political negligence and malpractice if they allowed Trump to make any supreme court appointments when they held the senate.
Afterall. Mitch McConnell did prove the court works just fine when its not full thanks to what he did to Merrick Garland. So there is no pressing rush to ever put a new justice on the court.
Furthermore, now that the senate has no reason to ever allow a hearing on an opposition presidents nominee, even Senate election in affect determines the future of the supreme court, will vacancies be allowed to be filled. And the justification for not holding hearings on Garland is it was an election year. And every other year is an election year for the senate.
So if the president and the senate arnt held by the same party, I guess we cant nominate Supreme Court Justices in the presidents 2nd or 4th (and 6th/8th if hes a two termer) year.
Actually its probibly worse than that....you know how everyone is making a big deal about Donald Trump's first 100 days? the same way they made a fuss about Barack Obama and George W's first 100 days?
Well the idea of the "First 100 days" is that thats really all the time there is until the next election cycle kicks off. So its not much of a stretch for an opposition senate to say they cant consider a presidents nominations after that 100 day period...cause you know, its an election and all.
And actually (the argument will go) the Supreme Court is so important we cant afford to compromise on a nominee at any time....so I guess we can never hold a hearing for an opposition president.
What I'm getting at is, thanks to Mitch McConnell we are going to see a whole lot more Merrick Garlands in the future, and we are going to need a term for them....and I think I have an idea.
The closest thing I can think of to this situation, when one party tries to take political power in a blatantly unfair and unintended fashion is the Gerrymander. This is of course when the congressional districts are drawn in such a way as to make it impossible for the opposition party to win no matter the actual voter support.
Now what you may not know is that the term Gerrymander takes it name from the former Vice President of the United States (under James Madison) Elbridge Gerry. As Governor of Massachusetts Gerry had signed a law allowing the redrawing of congressional districts in unorthodox shapes (one of which looked like a salamander) to benefit the Democratic-Republican party.
In that vein I suggest the term for a Supreme Court Nominee who never receives a hearing by the Senate (because its held by the opposition party to the president) is to say that nominee got "McConnelled"
So Merick Garland is the first nominee in history to be "McConnelled" but he wont be the last.
Now eventually its true, we will likely stop seeing nominees being "McConnelled" but thats likely going to be because Presidents are going to stop bothering to make the nominations in the first place. Meaning we are going to wind up with long chunks, possible as long as 8 or more years, in which it wont be possible to fill vacancies on the Supreme Court and no ones even nominating people to fill those spots.
I suggest the name for this period should be the "McConnell period".
So if the Democrats win the senate in 2018, we will enter a "McConnell period" that will last at least 2 years.....though its possible it even lasts 6 if Trump wins reelection and the Dems continue to hold the senate. And heck the "McConnell period" could last even longer than that. Between 1933 and 1981 the democrats held the senate for that entire 27 year period....which also included 14 years of Republicans Presidents.
Or, to use more modern example, of the currently serving members of the Supreme Court, only John Roberts, Sam Alito, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan were nominated outside a "McConnell" period. (note in an ironic twist, Antonin Scalia himself would never have been on the court, he was also an McConnell Period nominee).
And heres the thing, with the "McConnell rules" in effect, there currently wouldnt have been a vacancy on the court, as Barack Obama would have nominated 5 other justices as well during the 6 years his party held both the senate and white house.
Which would mean the current balance of the court would be 7-2 in favor of liberals.
Which sounds great for liberals....but who knows when the next non "McConnell" period is going to happen...next time if could be 7-2 or 8-1 in favor of the conservatives once the president of the senates party gets to fill all the open vacancies
And heres the real kicker....there is no way to fix this problem short of both sides agreeing to do something politically stupid and allow an opposition president to make an appointment: a constitutional amendment requiring a senate hearing on all presidential nominees.
So you better get used to nominees being "McConnelled" and long extended vacancies on the Supreme Court during possibly near decade long "McConnell periods".
So back when Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia died, Democrat Barack Obama was President of the United States with about a year left in his term.
Yet, when Scalia's replacement was finally confirmed, it was done by the new Republican President Donald Trump.
As many have pointed out, this seems well odd. Or to use the democrats term for it....this seems like stealing a supreme court seat from the Democrats to be filled by a Republican.
And it is.....even the man responsible for doing it, Mitch McConnell would agree to that.
Granted McConnell would feed you a bullshit line about needing to uphold the balance of the court (Scalia being a conservative and all, and Obama likely to have appointed a liberal), but he'd agree on the principle.
But what makes Mitch McConnell seem like an evil genius is that, in getting Neil Gorsuch (Donald Trump's nominee) confirmed to the Supreme Court, he destroyed the Filibuster for Supreme Court nominees, preventing the Democrats from being able to block the nomination indefinitly, as McConnell himself had done to Merrick Garland (Obama's nominee who wasnt confirmed).
In fact this is the interpretation many of the mainstream, right wing and left wing media are all taking (granted the Right wing points out its genius, and the left calls it evil but still again they agree on the core idea). Per the media, Mitch McConnell is the man who prevented the president of the opposition party from filling a supreme court seat he was constitutionally allowed to fill and turned that seat over to his parties president to fill it instead.....while also destroying the mechanism the opposition party could use to do the same thing to his party.
There is however a small problem with this interpretation: It's not accurate.
Some parts of it are indisputable: McConnell DID prevent Obama from making an appointment...and held the seat open until his party held the White House.
McConnell also nuked the filibuster.
The problem is....these two things are not the same, nor really connected.
See the filibuster was a method for the minority party to prevent anything from happening.
However at the time Garland was nominated by Obama, the Republicans were the majority party.
So to stop Garland, they didnt filibuster his nomination.
Instead they just flat out refused to hold vote (or even a hearing) on the man.
Now they did this, because the truth is, they couldnt come up with a politically viable reason to vote against him if he came up to a vote. And as McConnell repeated pointed out, this all happened in an election year.
Which was part of the problem....if Republicans voted for an Obama nominee they were afraid they would be used against them in election ads. At the same time, if they failed to vote for a obviously qualified nominee it would be used against them in election ads.
So no matter how they voted, they believed they would get screwed. So they found a way out. Dont vote. Its a bit harder to hold people accountable for things they didnt do, a belief, that given the GOP gained the white house while holding the senate was seemingly verified.
Now this may all seem irrelevant...after all according to most media reporting, this cant happen again...McConnell completed his genius plan by nuking the filibuster and getting Gorsuch on the court.
Except again....the Filibuster is a tactic where the minority stops a vote from happening.
Whereas McConnell invented a new tactic where the majority stops a vote from happening.
And well, quite frankly there is nothing preventing it from happening again.
Assuming anyone who reads this blog is a conservative and thrilled with how Trump got to put a right winger on the court, let me ask you a question: If the democrats take the senate in 2018 and their's another vacancy or two on the Supreme Court, what exactly do you think the chances are Donald Trump is going to get to fill those?
Thanks to Mitch McConnell new invention, its basically zero. Democrats would be guilty of political negligence and malpractice if they allowed Trump to make any supreme court appointments when they held the senate.
Afterall. Mitch McConnell did prove the court works just fine when its not full thanks to what he did to Merrick Garland. So there is no pressing rush to ever put a new justice on the court.
Furthermore, now that the senate has no reason to ever allow a hearing on an opposition presidents nominee, even Senate election in affect determines the future of the supreme court, will vacancies be allowed to be filled. And the justification for not holding hearings on Garland is it was an election year. And every other year is an election year for the senate.
So if the president and the senate arnt held by the same party, I guess we cant nominate Supreme Court Justices in the presidents 2nd or 4th (and 6th/8th if hes a two termer) year.
Actually its probibly worse than that....you know how everyone is making a big deal about Donald Trump's first 100 days? the same way they made a fuss about Barack Obama and George W's first 100 days?
Well the idea of the "First 100 days" is that thats really all the time there is until the next election cycle kicks off. So its not much of a stretch for an opposition senate to say they cant consider a presidents nominations after that 100 day period...cause you know, its an election and all.
And actually (the argument will go) the Supreme Court is so important we cant afford to compromise on a nominee at any time....so I guess we can never hold a hearing for an opposition president.
What I'm getting at is, thanks to Mitch McConnell we are going to see a whole lot more Merrick Garlands in the future, and we are going to need a term for them....and I think I have an idea.
The closest thing I can think of to this situation, when one party tries to take political power in a blatantly unfair and unintended fashion is the Gerrymander. This is of course when the congressional districts are drawn in such a way as to make it impossible for the opposition party to win no matter the actual voter support.
Now what you may not know is that the term Gerrymander takes it name from the former Vice President of the United States (under James Madison) Elbridge Gerry. As Governor of Massachusetts Gerry had signed a law allowing the redrawing of congressional districts in unorthodox shapes (one of which looked like a salamander) to benefit the Democratic-Republican party.
In that vein I suggest the term for a Supreme Court Nominee who never receives a hearing by the Senate (because its held by the opposition party to the president) is to say that nominee got "McConnelled"
So Merick Garland is the first nominee in history to be "McConnelled" but he wont be the last.
Now eventually its true, we will likely stop seeing nominees being "McConnelled" but thats likely going to be because Presidents are going to stop bothering to make the nominations in the first place. Meaning we are going to wind up with long chunks, possible as long as 8 or more years, in which it wont be possible to fill vacancies on the Supreme Court and no ones even nominating people to fill those spots.
I suggest the name for this period should be the "McConnell period".
So if the Democrats win the senate in 2018, we will enter a "McConnell period" that will last at least 2 years.....though its possible it even lasts 6 if Trump wins reelection and the Dems continue to hold the senate. And heck the "McConnell period" could last even longer than that. Between 1933 and 1981 the democrats held the senate for that entire 27 year period....which also included 14 years of Republicans Presidents.
Or, to use more modern example, of the currently serving members of the Supreme Court, only John Roberts, Sam Alito, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan were nominated outside a "McConnell" period. (note in an ironic twist, Antonin Scalia himself would never have been on the court, he was also an McConnell Period nominee).
And heres the thing, with the "McConnell rules" in effect, there currently wouldnt have been a vacancy on the court, as Barack Obama would have nominated 5 other justices as well during the 6 years his party held both the senate and white house.
Which would mean the current balance of the court would be 7-2 in favor of liberals.
Which sounds great for liberals....but who knows when the next non "McConnell" period is going to happen...next time if could be 7-2 or 8-1 in favor of the conservatives once the president of the senates party gets to fill all the open vacancies
And heres the real kicker....there is no way to fix this problem short of both sides agreeing to do something politically stupid and allow an opposition president to make an appointment: a constitutional amendment requiring a senate hearing on all presidential nominees.
So you better get used to nominees being "McConnelled" and long extended vacancies on the Supreme Court during possibly near decade long "McConnell periods".
Saturday, February 25, 2017
The President's Russian Problem
President Donald Trump has a problem, its called Russia. And its not going away.
Ok so back during the campaign then Candidate Trump made waves with a generally more sympathetic Russian policy than Americans were used to. So far no problem.
Then he suggested that the Russian Government should hack into his opponents emails and release them in an attempt to help him win the election. Which for what I assume are self explanatory reasons was a bit of problem for him when he said it. Now while Trump claimed "it was joke" [ed note read fake quote with Russian accent] it is still the thing that kicked off the idea that the Russian were trying to throw the election to Donald Trump, and that Trump might actually know and be ok with it.
Then he lost his campaign manager Paul Manafort, as Manafort was revealed to have had some shady dealings with a Ukrainian group backed by the Russians that might have made him into a blackmail risk by the Russian government.
Then Candidate Trump won the election and became president....and most people expected the story was over. Most people were wrong.
Not long after winning office, but before actually taking it every American intelligence agency concluded that Russia HAD in fact attempted to influence the election for Donald Trump.
Now it should be noted, in fairness, 2 things:
1) the claim was only that the Russians had attempted to influence the election.....there was no evidence to suggest they had actually seceded nor that they changed a single vote directly. The claim was more about helping funnel money to Trump's super-pac's or advertising
2) there was also a report suggesting Ukraine was doing similar things on a much smaller scale for Hillary Clinton.....so its possible this whole concept of foreign governments trying to influence our election via fundraising ect is much more common than we think.
Now, given the conscientious of American Intelligence on this issue, the smart thing for Trump to do would have been to acknowledge the results, stress the part where there was no proof the attempts worked, claim ignorance and pledged to call for an investigation to figure out how to prevent the same thing from happening in the future.
But this is Donald Trump, and unless he's trying to blow hot-air up his own ass, the words "Trump" and "smart" dont usually appear in the same sentence.
So Trump instead decided to go to war with the intelligence agencies stating "Intelligence agencies should never have allowed this fake news to 'leak' into the public. One last shot at me. Are we living in Nazi Germany?" among other issues.
Though to be fair, for a thin skinned ego maniac who's questioned the legitimacy of his own election because he cant accept the fact that he won despite not winning the popular vote (after all, per Trump everyone loves Trump), I suppose another thing that could be seen as suggesting he wasnt as liked as he thought (cause the Russians had to try to get people to like him...and still couldnt get him the popular vote) would piss him off.
But again, since we cant redo the election, most people assumed Trump was at least right about the "last shot" part...this story is totally over.
And then weeks later Mike Flynn was forced to resign. So much for the end of the story,
So, Mike Flynn had been Trump's National Security Adviser, so it was kinda a big deal when a story broke that, before Trump had taken office, Flynn had had some off the record (IE not handled, known about or approved by the state department) conversations with the Russian government.
Specifically that he'd contacted the Russian ambassador the very day then President Obama had announced sanctions and expelled Russian diplomats in response to the intelligence reports of Russia's attempted influence of our election.
Now Russia's original reactions per their diplomatic twitter account was:
#Peskov: There is no doubt that Russia's adequate and mirror response will make Washington officials feel very uncomfortable as well
#Zakharova: Tomorrow there will be official statements, countermeasures@MFA_Russia
Announced on December 29 sanctions are aimed directly at undermining #Russia #US bilateral relations. They won't be left unanswered
After those were posted is when Flynn allegedly contacted the Russian Ambassador.
And it turned out Russia's answer to the sactions was to do absolutely nothing....no promises of retaliation, no protests, nothing.
Which, lets be honest, seems extremely weird.
Well unless Mike Flynn promised them something on behalf of the incoming administration.
A conclusion backed up seemingly by the Russian government as President Putin issued the following statement:
“As it proceeds from international practice, Russia has reasons to respond in kind, Although we have the right to retaliate, we will not resort to irresponsible ‘kitchen’ diplomacy but will plan our further steps to restore Russian-US relations based on the policies of the Trump Administration.”
Flynn of course denied he had discussed the sanctions in the one phone call. then incoming Press Sec Sean Spicier, incoming VP Mike Pence and incoming Chief of Staff Reince Preibus would also go on TV and defend Flynn saying all 3 of them had seperately questioned him about it and gotten the same response....he hadnt said anything.
Donald Trump then takes the oath of office (Jan 23rd), and has Sean Spicier give an offical denial of wrongdoing on behalf of the White House.
3 days later (Jan 26th), Donald Trump was informed by acting attorney general Sally Yates (who Trump fired days later over the backlash of his immigration law) that per an FBI investigation what Flynn had said wasnt true and he was potentially vulnerable to blackmail by the Russian government.
Though at the time, and for weeks later nobody knew anything about this conversation, since Trump decided not to do anything about.
Then parts of the FBI investigation, included that Flynn had lied to the VP and to the FBI about the phone calls (of which there were 5, not the previously claimed 1) went public on February 9th. At which point Flynn changed his story to "he couldn't remember what they had discussed so its possible sanctions came up....its also possible they didnt"
However, before finally being forced to admit all of the last paragraph was true, Donald Trump on February 10th said the following when asked about the report on Flynn said "I don’t know about that. I haven’t seen it. What report is that? I haven’t seen that. I’ll look into that.” which, at the time, seemed like it might be true.
And then on February 13th it came out that Trump had been informed of the Flynn issue on Jan 26th, and hadnt done anything about it......including not bothering to inform the Vice President that his defense of Flynn wasnt true (Pence only discovered he'd been lied too when the media reported it) and that Trump's statement on February 10th was a lie.....or a cover-up which ever you prefer.
At which point, not 1, not 2, not 3, not even 4, but 5 congressional committees, in the Republican controlled congress started an investigation into Donald Trump's ties to Russia.
That's when it became obvious that this story was not going away.
Even after Flynn either chose to resign, was forced to resign, or was fired (Officials in the Trump administration gave conflicting accounts that support all 3 of these possibilities) this pretty much ensured this aint over yet.
(And for what its worth, it should be noted the FBI, in the report Trump got on Jan 26th, cleared Flynn of any legal wrongdoing...he did not break any laws in his conversations with the Russian's, nor did he intentionally lie to the FBI (as opposed to having a faulty memory) however they did confirm he was a national security risk due to something (still unknown to the public) that he said that made him a blackmail target...meaning Trump needed to get rid of him even if not for legal reasons, and chose not to and to cover it up until he had no choice. It should also be noting that in the conflicting rationales given as to how Flynn departed the White House mentioned other times Flynn had mislead them without going into specifics, so its possible those other events might resurface and create more problems for the Administration)
At which point we enter the current phase of the ever growing scandal:
A news story came out not long after Flynn's ouster saying the Trump campaign had been in near constant contact and coordination with the Russian government...which is well, flagrantly illegal. Not only that, but the FBI was investigating said coordination.
Trump for his part seemingly confirmed this story when he tweeted: "The FBI is totally unable to stop the national security ‘leakers’ that have permeated our government for a long time,They can't even find the leakers within the FBI itself. Classified information is being given to media that could have a devastating effect on U.S. FIND NOW.”
Consider, the only way Trump's tweet makes logical sense, is if the news story is accurate. If it wasnt, there was nothing for the FBI to have leaked, and the story would have been "fake news" instead. Oops.
Then the other shoe dropped, as a story came out that Reince Preibus, Trump's chief of staff can contacted the FBI to get them to issue an statement pushing back on the media reports that the FBI was investigating the Trump Campaign.
The FBI refused for 2 reasons
1) The report was accurate...in fact the FBI is running 3 separate investigations into the Trump campaigns potential coordination with Russia.
2) That kind of coordination between the FBI and the White House, especially about an ongoing investigation is unethical, and possible illegal.
That's not a good sign if your name happens to be Reince Prebus. His longevity in the white house now seems a little questionable.
Of course, the White House did their best to defend him.....sorta. The first reaction from the White House was to claim the FBI called Preibus (not the other way around) to let him know the news reports were wrong.
Which they then later changed to Preibus had in fact called the FBI, but not to influence the investigation.
So yea.....changing story, possible illegal contacts that at the end of the day are all about Russia....its like Mike Flynn all over again.
And should Priebus fall (which I think he will), I doubt the story will end with him either.
We now have at least one member of congress, Darrell Issa (the man who kicked off the whole Bengahzi investigations into Clinton) calling for a special prosecutor to investigate Trump's ties to Russia, and a Republican Senator calling for Trump's tax returns to subpoenaed as part of the congressional investigations to address the rumors floating around Trump for years that after his 6 bankruptcies american banks basically blacklisted him and most of his money these day tied up in foreign governments banks....including Russia.
So more things are going to keep turning up.
Furthermore, there are a few other elements at play that seem to confirm this story will keep growing even more and wont be going away anytime soon if at all.
1) Rex Tillerson, Sec of State, was formerly the head of Exxon. And as head of Exxon negotiated several deals worth 500 billion dollars with the Russian Government. Except none of those deals could go through thanks to the US Sanctions with Russia. However those deals could still go through, if an exception was given by the appropriate US official....like the Sec of State.
2) A few weeks back, Buzzfeed released a dossier on Trump, that to be fair was filled with some outrageous (and almost certainly untrue) allegations against Trump....including the existence of sex tapes, orgies ect. But also contained some much more reasonable claims as well (mostly conversations between Russian officals about Trump and influence over Trump)...those more reasonable claims have now seemingly been collaborated by the FBI (though we still dont have specifics or context to know exactly what that means).
3) Yesterday, Trump's administration banned several news organizations from the press pool, and as it happened those were the very same organizations who broke every single thing referenced in this blog.
So its hard to interpret that as anything other than a threat, reporting the administration doesnt like = loss of access....so only report stories the Administration wants or else.
Except the banned media organizations seem to have taken this as confirmation they are on to something (otherwise why would Trump care) and therefore should totally keep digging....which would seem to increase the odds even more Trump/Russia connections come out.
4) Just to end on a light note:
Yesterday Trump gave a speech at CPAC. During the speech many of his supporters starting waving a rather peculiar flag:
Ok so back during the campaign then Candidate Trump made waves with a generally more sympathetic Russian policy than Americans were used to. So far no problem.
Then he suggested that the Russian Government should hack into his opponents emails and release them in an attempt to help him win the election. Which for what I assume are self explanatory reasons was a bit of problem for him when he said it. Now while Trump claimed "it was joke" [ed note read fake quote with Russian accent] it is still the thing that kicked off the idea that the Russian were trying to throw the election to Donald Trump, and that Trump might actually know and be ok with it.
Then he lost his campaign manager Paul Manafort, as Manafort was revealed to have had some shady dealings with a Ukrainian group backed by the Russians that might have made him into a blackmail risk by the Russian government.
Then Candidate Trump won the election and became president....and most people expected the story was over. Most people were wrong.
Not long after winning office, but before actually taking it every American intelligence agency concluded that Russia HAD in fact attempted to influence the election for Donald Trump.
Now it should be noted, in fairness, 2 things:
1) the claim was only that the Russians had attempted to influence the election.....there was no evidence to suggest they had actually seceded nor that they changed a single vote directly. The claim was more about helping funnel money to Trump's super-pac's or advertising
2) there was also a report suggesting Ukraine was doing similar things on a much smaller scale for Hillary Clinton.....so its possible this whole concept of foreign governments trying to influence our election via fundraising ect is much more common than we think.
Now, given the conscientious of American Intelligence on this issue, the smart thing for Trump to do would have been to acknowledge the results, stress the part where there was no proof the attempts worked, claim ignorance and pledged to call for an investigation to figure out how to prevent the same thing from happening in the future.
But this is Donald Trump, and unless he's trying to blow hot-air up his own ass, the words "Trump" and "smart" dont usually appear in the same sentence.
So Trump instead decided to go to war with the intelligence agencies stating "Intelligence agencies should never have allowed this fake news to 'leak' into the public. One last shot at me. Are we living in Nazi Germany?" among other issues.
Though to be fair, for a thin skinned ego maniac who's questioned the legitimacy of his own election because he cant accept the fact that he won despite not winning the popular vote (after all, per Trump everyone loves Trump), I suppose another thing that could be seen as suggesting he wasnt as liked as he thought (cause the Russians had to try to get people to like him...and still couldnt get him the popular vote) would piss him off.
But again, since we cant redo the election, most people assumed Trump was at least right about the "last shot" part...this story is totally over.
And then weeks later Mike Flynn was forced to resign. So much for the end of the story,
So, Mike Flynn had been Trump's National Security Adviser, so it was kinda a big deal when a story broke that, before Trump had taken office, Flynn had had some off the record (IE not handled, known about or approved by the state department) conversations with the Russian government.
Specifically that he'd contacted the Russian ambassador the very day then President Obama had announced sanctions and expelled Russian diplomats in response to the intelligence reports of Russia's attempted influence of our election.
Now Russia's original reactions per their diplomatic twitter account was:
#Peskov: There is no doubt that Russia's adequate and mirror response will make Washington officials feel very uncomfortable as well
#Zakharova: Tomorrow there will be official statements, countermeasures@MFA_Russia
Announced on December 29 sanctions are aimed directly at undermining #Russia #US bilateral relations. They won't be left unanswered
After those were posted is when Flynn allegedly contacted the Russian Ambassador.
And it turned out Russia's answer to the sactions was to do absolutely nothing....no promises of retaliation, no protests, nothing.
Which, lets be honest, seems extremely weird.
Well unless Mike Flynn promised them something on behalf of the incoming administration.
A conclusion backed up seemingly by the Russian government as President Putin issued the following statement:
“As it proceeds from international practice, Russia has reasons to respond in kind, Although we have the right to retaliate, we will not resort to irresponsible ‘kitchen’ diplomacy but will plan our further steps to restore Russian-US relations based on the policies of the Trump Administration.”
Flynn of course denied he had discussed the sanctions in the one phone call. then incoming Press Sec Sean Spicier, incoming VP Mike Pence and incoming Chief of Staff Reince Preibus would also go on TV and defend Flynn saying all 3 of them had seperately questioned him about it and gotten the same response....he hadnt said anything.
Donald Trump then takes the oath of office (Jan 23rd), and has Sean Spicier give an offical denial of wrongdoing on behalf of the White House.
3 days later (Jan 26th), Donald Trump was informed by acting attorney general Sally Yates (who Trump fired days later over the backlash of his immigration law) that per an FBI investigation what Flynn had said wasnt true and he was potentially vulnerable to blackmail by the Russian government.
Though at the time, and for weeks later nobody knew anything about this conversation, since Trump decided not to do anything about.
Then parts of the FBI investigation, included that Flynn had lied to the VP and to the FBI about the phone calls (of which there were 5, not the previously claimed 1) went public on February 9th. At which point Flynn changed his story to "he couldn't remember what they had discussed so its possible sanctions came up....its also possible they didnt"
However, before finally being forced to admit all of the last paragraph was true, Donald Trump on February 10th said the following when asked about the report on Flynn said "I don’t know about that. I haven’t seen it. What report is that? I haven’t seen that. I’ll look into that.” which, at the time, seemed like it might be true.
And then on February 13th it came out that Trump had been informed of the Flynn issue on Jan 26th, and hadnt done anything about it......including not bothering to inform the Vice President that his defense of Flynn wasnt true (Pence only discovered he'd been lied too when the media reported it) and that Trump's statement on February 10th was a lie.....or a cover-up which ever you prefer.
At which point, not 1, not 2, not 3, not even 4, but 5 congressional committees, in the Republican controlled congress started an investigation into Donald Trump's ties to Russia.
That's when it became obvious that this story was not going away.
Even after Flynn either chose to resign, was forced to resign, or was fired (Officials in the Trump administration gave conflicting accounts that support all 3 of these possibilities) this pretty much ensured this aint over yet.
(And for what its worth, it should be noted the FBI, in the report Trump got on Jan 26th, cleared Flynn of any legal wrongdoing...he did not break any laws in his conversations with the Russian's, nor did he intentionally lie to the FBI (as opposed to having a faulty memory) however they did confirm he was a national security risk due to something (still unknown to the public) that he said that made him a blackmail target...meaning Trump needed to get rid of him even if not for legal reasons, and chose not to and to cover it up until he had no choice. It should also be noting that in the conflicting rationales given as to how Flynn departed the White House mentioned other times Flynn had mislead them without going into specifics, so its possible those other events might resurface and create more problems for the Administration)
At which point we enter the current phase of the ever growing scandal:
A news story came out not long after Flynn's ouster saying the Trump campaign had been in near constant contact and coordination with the Russian government...which is well, flagrantly illegal. Not only that, but the FBI was investigating said coordination.
Trump for his part seemingly confirmed this story when he tweeted: "The FBI is totally unable to stop the national security ‘leakers’ that have permeated our government for a long time,They can't even find the leakers within the FBI itself. Classified information is being given to media that could have a devastating effect on U.S. FIND NOW.”
Consider, the only way Trump's tweet makes logical sense, is if the news story is accurate. If it wasnt, there was nothing for the FBI to have leaked, and the story would have been "fake news" instead. Oops.
Then the other shoe dropped, as a story came out that Reince Preibus, Trump's chief of staff can contacted the FBI to get them to issue an statement pushing back on the media reports that the FBI was investigating the Trump Campaign.
The FBI refused for 2 reasons
1) The report was accurate...in fact the FBI is running 3 separate investigations into the Trump campaigns potential coordination with Russia.
2) That kind of coordination between the FBI and the White House, especially about an ongoing investigation is unethical, and possible illegal.
That's not a good sign if your name happens to be Reince Prebus. His longevity in the white house now seems a little questionable.
Of course, the White House did their best to defend him.....sorta. The first reaction from the White House was to claim the FBI called Preibus (not the other way around) to let him know the news reports were wrong.
Which they then later changed to Preibus had in fact called the FBI, but not to influence the investigation.
So yea.....changing story, possible illegal contacts that at the end of the day are all about Russia....its like Mike Flynn all over again.
And should Priebus fall (which I think he will), I doubt the story will end with him either.
We now have at least one member of congress, Darrell Issa (the man who kicked off the whole Bengahzi investigations into Clinton) calling for a special prosecutor to investigate Trump's ties to Russia, and a Republican Senator calling for Trump's tax returns to subpoenaed as part of the congressional investigations to address the rumors floating around Trump for years that after his 6 bankruptcies american banks basically blacklisted him and most of his money these day tied up in foreign governments banks....including Russia.
So more things are going to keep turning up.
Furthermore, there are a few other elements at play that seem to confirm this story will keep growing even more and wont be going away anytime soon if at all.
1) Rex Tillerson, Sec of State, was formerly the head of Exxon. And as head of Exxon negotiated several deals worth 500 billion dollars with the Russian Government. Except none of those deals could go through thanks to the US Sanctions with Russia. However those deals could still go through, if an exception was given by the appropriate US official....like the Sec of State.
2) A few weeks back, Buzzfeed released a dossier on Trump, that to be fair was filled with some outrageous (and almost certainly untrue) allegations against Trump....including the existence of sex tapes, orgies ect. But also contained some much more reasonable claims as well (mostly conversations between Russian officals about Trump and influence over Trump)...those more reasonable claims have now seemingly been collaborated by the FBI (though we still dont have specifics or context to know exactly what that means).
3) Yesterday, Trump's administration banned several news organizations from the press pool, and as it happened those were the very same organizations who broke every single thing referenced in this blog.
So its hard to interpret that as anything other than a threat, reporting the administration doesnt like = loss of access....so only report stories the Administration wants or else.
Except the banned media organizations seem to have taken this as confirmation they are on to something (otherwise why would Trump care) and therefore should totally keep digging....which would seem to increase the odds even more Trump/Russia connections come out.
4) Just to end on a light note:
Yesterday Trump gave a speech at CPAC. During the speech many of his supporters starting waving a rather peculiar flag:
For the uninitiated, thats the Russian flag. OOPS.
now to be fair, this appears to be work of a pair of liberal pranksters who were giving the flags away for free, and is more an indictment of the intelligence of the Trump supporters who took it and didnt realize what it was, than any actual wrongdoing or scandal by the Trump administration.
But it is symbolic of the fact that no matter where he goes, Trump cant seem to get away from Russia.
now to be fair, this appears to be work of a pair of liberal pranksters who were giving the flags away for free, and is more an indictment of the intelligence of the Trump supporters who took it and didnt realize what it was, than any actual wrongdoing or scandal by the Trump administration.
But it is symbolic of the fact that no matter where he goes, Trump cant seem to get away from Russia.
Sunday, January 22, 2017
If you want to piss off Donald Trump, share this blog.
So Donald Trump has been president now for about 48 hours, but if one thing has already become clear, nobody likes Trump.....and it bothers the hell out of him.
Take this picture for example:
Spicer by the way wasnt the only one to lie about inauguration either.
President Trump himself decided it was a good to lie about the inauguration too, at an event he was doing at the CIA. Now given that the purpose of the event was to convince people Trump wasnt fueding with the intelligence agencies when they spent months saying Russia influenced our elections, and trump wouldnt accept it, its not that surprising really he tossed in a couple more lies.
Like Spicer Trump claimed he had a YUGE crowd, possibly the biggest ever:
"We had a massive field of people. You saw that. Packed, I get up this morning, I turn on one of the networks, they show an empty field. I said, wait a minute, I made a speech. I looked out, it looked like a million, a million and a half people. They showed a field where there were practically nobody standing there. It went all the way back to the Washington Monument,"
You know, I dont want to suggest the president is mentally ill...but I think hes seeing invisible people....
But he followed it up with an even bigger and better lie...in fact it might be my favorite lie hes ever told:
“God looked down and, and he said we’re not going to let it rain on your speech.. . .The truth is it stopped immediately.”
Cause see, like a bridzilla, on Donald Trump's big day everything is going to be perfect god damn it, and when its not...hes just going to lie about it so you'll think hes special.
Now I could respond more to this claim directly myself...but I'm not going to.
Instead I'm going to outsource my response to my team of professional bullshit analysts, first from our Irony Department, the Rev, Franklin Graham who also gave a speech at Trump's inauguration:
“Mr. President, in the Bible, rain is a sign of God’s blessing. And it started to rain, Mr. President, when you came to the platform (for his inaugural speech).”
Now not only does that sound like it was totally raining during Trump's speech...it sounds like that should be seen as a good thing as far as God's concerned....and if Trump was telling the truth that it really did stop raining when he started talking, that would mean even God hates him.
But I dont really trust Rev Graham on this any more than I do Trump (either that or Graham and I have very different recollections about Noah and his Ark) so I'd like some visual proof, which happened to be collected by my other trained bullshit analysts:
First up, Former First and Second Ladies Michelle Obama and Jill Biden, as well as Former Secretary of State and First Lady Hillary Clinton:
Ladies was it raining during trumps inauguration?:
I'm going to go ahead and say between the poncho and the umbrella, that 3 votes for "it was raining"
But of course, all 3 of those ladies are Democrats...and therefore want to make Trump look bad....so lets get some republican opinions
Former President George W. Bush, was it raining at Trump's inauguration?
Madam First Lady, was it raining when your husband was speaking????
So remember folks....if you really want to piss Trump off.....just keep pointing out how on the most important day of his life we all had better things to do.
Take this picture for example:
Donald Trump HATES this picture, because it shows that more people had the audacity to see someone else's inauguration than see his.
Which is why he had his press secretary lie and actually try to claim your eyes are deciving you
Per press secretary Sean Spicer: "This was the first time in our nation's history that floor coverings have been used to protect the grass on the Mall. That had the effect of highlighting any areas where people were not standing, while in years past, the grass eliminated this visual."
Yea, it turns out a fuck ton of people in the photo on the left arnt real....its an illusion created by magic grass, which is able to impersonate people....
Oh yea...except it turns out, this is not the first time those plastic coverings were used...they were used in 2013 as well (normally id provide a picture to prove this, but all the pictures ive found keep getting rejected this website ass backwards https system, so instead just go here to see one of them if youd like)
Nor was that the only lie Spicer told: He also claimed that as proof the magic grass is the reason you only think the Obama inauguration was more popular that metro's ridership numbers back him up.
Again per spicer:
"We know that 420,000 people used the D.C. Metro public transit yesterday, which actually compares to 317,000 that used it for President Obama's last inaugural."
Actually to be fair, one of those numbers is correct. in 2009 317,000 people took trips on metro downtown PRIOR to 11am (IE the start of inauguration)
The other number on the other hand, is actually embarrassingly wrong.
See in the context of the sentence, it appears Spicer is looking at the daily totals of metro riders, which for Trump wasnt 420,000.....it was 570,557.
Thats right in his hurry to lie....Spicer/Trumps team made up a number....and if we take the comparison at face value (which we shouldnt for reasons I'll get to in a second) it makes Trump look WORSE than the actual number word.
Lying about how much better you were than the last guy....and then making your guy look less impressive when doing it.....that takes real talent.
Unless of course, Spicer wasnt trying to trick you by comparing the total number of rides that day (which would include rides to and from) ONLY to the rides in one direction for Obama.
Then lying makes more sense.
See while Obama had 317,000 rides into DC before 11am, Trump's inauguration generated only 193,000.
So that might explain why spicer pulled a random large number out of his ass....though still youd think he'd have stuck with the daily total, as people might not have noticed the unfair comparison that quickly if both number checked out.
(by the way, even on the whole day numbers. Obama still crushed Trump with 1.1 million trips to and from his inaguration compared to the 570.557 for Trump)
Which is why he had his press secretary lie and actually try to claim your eyes are deciving you
Per press secretary Sean Spicer: "This was the first time in our nation's history that floor coverings have been used to protect the grass on the Mall. That had the effect of highlighting any areas where people were not standing, while in years past, the grass eliminated this visual."
Yea, it turns out a fuck ton of people in the photo on the left arnt real....its an illusion created by magic grass, which is able to impersonate people....
Oh yea...except it turns out, this is not the first time those plastic coverings were used...they were used in 2013 as well (normally id provide a picture to prove this, but all the pictures ive found keep getting rejected this website ass backwards https system, so instead just go here to see one of them if youd like)
Nor was that the only lie Spicer told: He also claimed that as proof the magic grass is the reason you only think the Obama inauguration was more popular that metro's ridership numbers back him up.
Again per spicer:
"We know that 420,000 people used the D.C. Metro public transit yesterday, which actually compares to 317,000 that used it for President Obama's last inaugural."
Actually to be fair, one of those numbers is correct. in 2009 317,000 people took trips on metro downtown PRIOR to 11am (IE the start of inauguration)
The other number on the other hand, is actually embarrassingly wrong.
See in the context of the sentence, it appears Spicer is looking at the daily totals of metro riders, which for Trump wasnt 420,000.....it was 570,557.
Thats right in his hurry to lie....Spicer/Trumps team made up a number....and if we take the comparison at face value (which we shouldnt for reasons I'll get to in a second) it makes Trump look WORSE than the actual number word.
Lying about how much better you were than the last guy....and then making your guy look less impressive when doing it.....that takes real talent.
Unless of course, Spicer wasnt trying to trick you by comparing the total number of rides that day (which would include rides to and from) ONLY to the rides in one direction for Obama.
Then lying makes more sense.
See while Obama had 317,000 rides into DC before 11am, Trump's inauguration generated only 193,000.
So that might explain why spicer pulled a random large number out of his ass....though still youd think he'd have stuck with the daily total, as people might not have noticed the unfair comparison that quickly if both number checked out.
(by the way, even on the whole day numbers. Obama still crushed Trump with 1.1 million trips to and from his inaguration compared to the 570.557 for Trump)
Spicer by the way wasnt the only one to lie about inauguration either.
President Trump himself decided it was a good to lie about the inauguration too, at an event he was doing at the CIA. Now given that the purpose of the event was to convince people Trump wasnt fueding with the intelligence agencies when they spent months saying Russia influenced our elections, and trump wouldnt accept it, its not that surprising really he tossed in a couple more lies.
Like Spicer Trump claimed he had a YUGE crowd, possibly the biggest ever:
"We had a massive field of people. You saw that. Packed, I get up this morning, I turn on one of the networks, they show an empty field. I said, wait a minute, I made a speech. I looked out, it looked like a million, a million and a half people. They showed a field where there were practically nobody standing there. It went all the way back to the Washington Monument,"
You know, I dont want to suggest the president is mentally ill...but I think hes seeing invisible people....
But he followed it up with an even bigger and better lie...in fact it might be my favorite lie hes ever told:
“God looked down and, and he said we’re not going to let it rain on your speech.. . .The truth is it stopped immediately.”
Cause see, like a bridzilla, on Donald Trump's big day everything is going to be perfect god damn it, and when its not...hes just going to lie about it so you'll think hes special.
Now I could respond more to this claim directly myself...but I'm not going to.
Instead I'm going to outsource my response to my team of professional bullshit analysts, first from our Irony Department, the Rev, Franklin Graham who also gave a speech at Trump's inauguration:
“Mr. President, in the Bible, rain is a sign of God’s blessing. And it started to rain, Mr. President, when you came to the platform (for his inaugural speech).”
Now not only does that sound like it was totally raining during Trump's speech...it sounds like that should be seen as a good thing as far as God's concerned....and if Trump was telling the truth that it really did stop raining when he started talking, that would mean even God hates him.
But I dont really trust Rev Graham on this any more than I do Trump (either that or Graham and I have very different recollections about Noah and his Ark) so I'd like some visual proof, which happened to be collected by my other trained bullshit analysts:
First up, Former First and Second Ladies Michelle Obama and Jill Biden, as well as Former Secretary of State and First Lady Hillary Clinton:
Ladies was it raining during trumps inauguration?:
I'm going to go ahead and say between the poncho and the umbrella, that 3 votes for "it was raining"
But of course, all 3 of those ladies are Democrats...and therefore want to make Trump look bad....so lets get some republican opinions
Former President George W. Bush, was it raining at Trump's inauguration?
That looks to be another yes.......though lets be fair to Trump, he did admit it was raining, just not when he was speaking....and we cant be 100% sure those pictures were taken as he was speaking...so lets go to one last Bullshit analyst and a expert on Donald Trump.......First Lady Melania Trump:
Madam First Lady, was it raining when your husband was speaking????
Yep....I think that evidence is irrefutable.....even Donald Trump's wife thinks he's full of shit on this one.
So remember folks....if you really want to piss Trump off.....just keep pointing out how on the most important day of his life we all had better things to do.
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