They both can't be Fredo, can they? Junior and Eric

[onekidanddone]

15 minutes ago, formergothardite said:

Even the Fox news hosts were looking at him like he was spouting crazy. 

Past lives like reincarnation? So are you saying they were thugs, rapists, racists, crooks in another life?  

[AmazonGrace]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"The president’s sons entrusted their private hunting retreat to a caretaker. He was working in the country illegally."

Spoiler

WINGDALE, N.Y. — One morning last May, Eric Trump sent a text message to the caretaker of the shooting range he and his brother own in Upstate New York. The weather was getting warmer, and it was time to plant crops to attract deer that the Trumps and their friends could hunt.

“Juan — how are the fields coming along,” Eric Trump wrote to Juan Quintero. “They need to be planted in the next week or so in order to make the season. Hope you are great.”

“I’m working in it,” Quintero replied in his limited English.

Quintero, 42, was so trusted by the Trumps that he had not one but two jobs working for the family. He was a greenskeeper at the Trump National Golf Club Hudson Valley in Hopewell Junction, N.Y., where he would work eight-hour shifts on weekdays. Then he would put in five more hours each day as a contractor at the 171-acre hunting retreat called Leather Hill Preserve, which serves as a private weekend playground for President Trump’s sons and the property’s co-owners.

He also was an immigrant from Mexico who had crossed the border more than two decades ago and was working illegally in the United States.

In January, Quintero lost his golf course job after 18 years of employment — part of a purge of undocumented workers from Trump’s businesses amid revelations that the company relied on illegal labor for years, well into Trump’s presidency. Gone, too, was his side job at the hunting retreat.

“All of the years you give them, and they just let you go,” Quintero said in a recent interview at his home in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. “They do not say, ‘Let’s do something, let’s try to help you.’ They simply said, ‘Your documents are not valid,’ and that is it.”

Quintero said he never directly told Eric Trump about his immigration status. But he said he remained employed by the hunting lodge for more than a year after not providing the owners with a Social Security number when they sought to issue him a debit card.

Quintero, whose work at the shooting range has not been previously disclosed, is the second undocumented employee to step forward in recent weeks to say he did work directly to assist Eric Trump, who along with brother Donald Trump Jr. has been running the Trump Organization’s day-to-day operations.

Eric Trump, who separately owns Leather Hill Preserve with his brother and several other partners, declined to comment. Trump Jr. did not respond to requests for comment. It is unclear whether they knew about Quintero’s immigration status.

Quintero’s relationship with the president’s son shows how the Trump family’s reliance on low-wage immigrants without legal status has gone beyond its golf courses. His work at the shooting range deepens questions about what measures the Trump family and its businesses have taken to prevent the hiring of workers the president casts as invaders and criminals.

Quintero said he met with Eric Trump to discuss his job duties and shared copies of text messages sent from a number matching that of Trump’s personal cellphone — saved in his contacts under the name “Erik Boss.”

The exchanges show that Eric Trump closely tracked Quintero’s work.

“Hi Juan. How is the planting coming along? Did you ever get to the small fields — the two off of the rifle range and the soy bean plot?” Trump wrote nine days after first texting the caretaker about the fields.

“Rapido, my friend,” another owner, Jeffrey Ferraro, chimed in. “Mas rapido pot favor ,” he wrote, making an apparent typo.

In recent months, The Washington Post has reported that the Trump Organization employed immigrant workers without legal status at five golf courses in New York and New Jersey. One of the president’s prized properties, a club in Bedminster, N.J., was built and maintained by dozens of laborers from Costa Rica and other Latin American countries who worked there for more than 16 years.

In all, The Post has interviewed 33 immigrants who have worked for the president’s clubs without legal status. Among them was Gabriel Sedano, a maintenance worker from Mexico who told The Post in January that he had a set of keys for a home that Eric Trump used at the Trump course in Westchester County, N.Y. Sedano was responsible for taking out the trash and making repairs, he said.

Quintero and other former Trump workers said they believe that their supervisors knew they lacked legal status — and that the company appeared concerned about violating immigration laws only in recent months.

After the New York Times published a report in December about two immigrant housekeepers who worked at the Bedminster club without proper documentation, the company began an audit of its workforce and fired workers at various properties.

In January, the Trump Organization announced that it would expand the use of the government’s E-Verify program to screen new hires at all of its U.S. properties. The company had not widely used the tool, despite a claim to the contrary by Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign.

Eric Trump has described the process of firing workers as “truly heartbreaking,” adding, “Our employees are like family, but when presented with fake documents, an employer has little choice.

“This situation is not unique to Trump Organization — it is one that all companies face,” he said. “It demonstrates that our immigration system is severely broken and needs to be fixed immediately.”

Like other Trump workers who have lost their jobs, Quintero said he presented a phony green card when he was hired at the golf course by its previous owners. He said he used the same false papers to continue working there after Trump acquired the property in 2009. When Quintero got the offer in 2016 to tend to the brothers’ hunting retreat, he said, no one asked about his legal status.

Having lost both jobs, Quintero now fears being deported and separated from his wife and four U.S.-born sons.

His attorney, Anibal Romero, who represents dozens of immigrants fired from Trump properties, said Quintero is among several clients who have been interviewed by the New York State Attorney General’s Office in recent weeks.

Attorney General Letitia James (D) has not announced a formal investigation of the Trumps’ hiring practices. A spokeswoman for James declined to comment.

Romero said his clients are cooperating with authorities and should be shielded from deportation. “They are material witnesses to federal and state crimes, and any attempt to remove them from the United States should be considered obstruction of justice,” he said.

Quintero said he wanted to speak publicly because he has been stung by the president’s disparaging words about Hispanic migrants.

“I want them to recognize the good that we do,” Quintero said. “Eighteen years of working [at the golf club] should shed a light that we are not the people that he says we are: bad, rapist, drug dealers, the worst that they say that we are.”

Proud to work for Trump

Quintero’s journey to the Trump golf club and the Trump brothers’ hunting retreat began in Valle de Chalco, a working-class suburb of Mexico City. As a teenager, he said, he crossed the border in Tijuana, then made his way to New York City, where his father was living.

Quintero said he sold flowers without a permit on the sidewalks of Chinatown, dodging police who would confiscate his merchandise on occasion. He eventually moved to Poughkeepsie, where his uncle lived, and worked at a furniture factory. Then, through a family friend, Quintero said, he found a job watering the grass at the Branton Woods Golf Club, about 60 miles north of Manhattan.

He filled out the paperwork with a fake green card in his name. “They never told me anything about whether they were good or not,” he said of his bosses.

When Trump bought the golf course in 2009, he changed its name to Trump National Golf Club Hudson Valley. Quintero said he showed his new managers the same phony documents he’d used before. Golf club officials did not respond to requests for comment.

Trump increased his salary — first by a dollar, to $15 an hour, and eventually to the $18.75 rate he was earning at the time he lost his job, Quintero said.

Quintero, who specialized in spraying herbicides and other chemicals on the course, said he was proud to work for such a famous man.

Once, when Trump was playing at the course, Quintero remembers sitting on a tractor by the 14th hole. Trump shook his hand and asked Quintero how long he’d worked there, he recalled. Trump tipped him $50 and told him to buy his wife a nice lunch. They bought beer instead and had a backyard cookout.

“He’s not bad,” Quintero recalled thinking of Trump. “To give us a job and not check papers.”

In 2016, Quintero said, one of his bosses at the golf club offered him a second job at the shooting range that belonged to the president’s sons. They were looking for someone to clear brush, mow the grass and maintain the off-road vehicles in the garage.

The Trump brothers and at least three partners had bought the Leather Hill estate — a house, some fields and a wooded hillside — for $665,000 in 2013, public records show. The property abuts the crumbling campus of a former state psychiatric hospital. Trump does not appear to have any ownership of the property.

Leather Hill’s previous owners had raised free-range chickens and sold produce at the Union Square farmers market in Manhattan, neighbor Elisabetta Berghold said.

The forest near the house had an easement where a utility line once cut through, leaving a long, straight slash through the trees. It was an ideal spot for target practice, with a tower from which the brothers could fire the kind of rifles used for trophy and big-game hunting.

“One of the fields has a 500-yard range thanks to Eric Trump, who put it together,” wrote Peter Lewis Horn II, one of the owners of the property, who described it in his memoir, “Hunting Across the Danube.” Horn declined to comment.

Last year, several neighbors began complaining publicly that loud booms of gunfire on the weekends rattled their windows and frightened their pets.

“Every neighbor I’ve talked to is against” the shooting range, said Mike Dougherty, who lives about half a mile away. “You’re sitting outside and enjoying a lunch, and suddenly you hear an explosion. You can’t relax. It’s very unsettling.”

'I need my papers'

For Quintero, who was usually there alone during the week, the shooting range was a peaceful, somewhat solitary place — but a welcome source of extra income. He liked the responsibility of working for the president’s family and learning new skills. He said he would watch online videos about growing crops and attracting deer.

“It was the first time I was responsible for an estate or property like this,” Quintero said. “It felt like a new challenge in life.”

When he was hired, Quintero was required to sign a contract stating that he “will not disclose to anyone, and always keep secret” any details about the property and its owners, according to a copy he showed The Post. The contract stated that he would be paid on a “Project by Project basis” and would be responsible for paying all taxes.

Quintero was not asked to fill out a form attesting to his employment eligibility, his attorney said.

Quintero was paid $1,000 a month for working up to 25 hours per week, according to a copy of a paycheck he provided to The Post.

He said he usually communicated via group text with Eric Trump and Ferraro, who was listed in Quintero’s phone contacts as “Boss Montaña.”

They talked about planting schedules and repairs; at one point, Quintero was instructed to install a hose in a chicken coop where the owners field-dressed dead deer. He alerted them in August when a small snake slipped into the house.

Although the work was spooky at times, alone in the woods, he considered it “an honor.”

“One feels happy to say, ‘Oh, wow, I am working for the president’s son, on his property,’ ” he said.

Quintero said that his job didn’t change when Trump was elected president, but that the security did. At one point in early 2017, he said, Ferraro called him to the property — and Secret Service agents stopped him at the gate.

“That day to me was shocking,” Quintero said. “I did not expect to find the Secret Service or Eric when I arrived. My reaction was, ‘Wow, he is here,’ ” referring to the president’s son.

The meeting was to discuss Quintero’s maintenance duties on the property. When he sat down, he recalled that Eric Trump asked him if he needed anything.

“The thought hit me that yes, I need my papers,” Quintero recalled. “Right now, that’s the only thing I need.”

But Quintero said his immigration status was not discussed during that 15- to 20-minute encounter.

However, the subject came up several months later. In mid-2017, Quintero said, Ferraro sent him a message asking for his Social Security number because he wanted to get him a debit card to buy supplies for the property.

Quintero never responded. Panicked, he said he turned to the closest neighbor to Leather Hill, a man named Thomas Sartoris, who was friendly with Ferraro and the Trumps.

“He always helped me whenever I had a problem,” Quintero said.

Quintero said Sartoris urged him to be honest.

“Tell him you don’t have a Social. Even better, tell him to help fix your papers,” Quintero recalled Sartoris saying. “You work for the son of the president, you work for the president. How many years have you worked for them? Let them help you.”

A few weeks later, Quintero found a debit card left for him in a garage on the property where he collected his paychecks and left his receipts. The card, a photo of which was viewed by The Post, was under the name Jason Decker, Leather Hill Preserve, and issued by TD Bank, where Ferraro works as a financial adviser.

Quintero said that Sartoris told him that he had passed along Quintero’s concerns about having a fake Social Security number to Ferraro.

Sartoris told The Post that he knew Quintero but declined to comment further. Ferraro did not return repeated requests for comment.

Quintero said he never spoke about the issue with Ferraro or the Trumps.

Jason Decker is one of the owners of the hunting property, according to another owner, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the group’s private dealings.

Quintero said he had never heard of Decker. The Post could not reach Decker to confirm his connection to Leather Hill.

Quintero said he used the card in Decker’s name regularly, making purchases of up to $1,900 at a time for repairs and supplies such as seed and fertilizer.

In January, Quintero said he was called to a meeting with a human resources executive at the Hudson Valley golf course, who told him that his papers were not genuine and that he needed to submit real documents.

Quintero said he never went back — and assumed that meant he also had lost his job at the hunting retreat. He did not return to the property and said he has not heard from Eric Trump. He said Ferraro called once last month, after inquiries from The Post, but Quintero did not call him back.

'What am I going to do now?'

U.S. labor laws require employers to verify an employee’s eligibility to work, and companies can face civil and criminal penalties for hiring illegal workers.

Employers generally do not have to file a form used to verify identity and work authorization for independent contractors or those who do “casual domestic services,” according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Federal law still prohibits people from knowingly hiring a person not authorized to work in the United States as a contractor.

Romero said that Quintero’s relationship with Leather Hill’s owners was in effect that of an employee, not a contractor. Unlike a typical contractor — such as a house painter or a handyman working a short-term job — Quintero did not bring his own tools or supplies. He worked a regular schedule — up to 25 hours per week. And contractors typically aren’t provided with a debit card for expenses, Romero said.

“You can put many things on paper, but if the reality of the facts are not a reflection of what actually happens, then that’s what matters in court,” he said.

Quintero now worries about how to find a new job and support his family. He could apply at other golf courses in the Hudson Valley area, but he said he doesn’t think they would be willing to hire someone without real documents.

“I am the backbone of the house — what am I going to do now?” Quintero said. “One feels worst when you have kids and a family, and you’re the only provider. The kids ask me: ‘What are you doing here, Daddy? You did not go to work?’ ”

“It hurts to tell them, ‘Well, I don’t have this paper, I don’t have papers,’ ” he added.

He said his oldest son now knows what that means, asking, “Are they are going to deport you?”

Quintero said he cannot imagine relocating his American children to Mexico.

“I believe they belong here,” he said. “What happened to me is a part of life for not having the right papers.”

 

[GreyhoundFan]

I like Ann's comeback to Fredo:

 

[onekidanddone]

3 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

I like Ann's comeback to Fredo:

 

“Which hunt”. ?

[Audrey2]

2 hours ago, onekidanddone said:

“Which hunt”. ?

I'd like to think that the Trumps either use a lot of talk to text or Autocorrect gets them, but I fear they really are that unintelligent.

[GreyhoundFan]

"Why Trump Jr. mocked the parents caught up in the college admissions scandal"

Spoiler

President Trump’s surrogates seemed to take a certain kind of glee in shaming those accused Tuesday of participating in a college admissions scandal.

Fifty people — including two television stars — were charged with scheming and bribing to get their children into elite universities. Numerous schools were involved, including Georgetown, Yale, Stanford, the University of Texas, the University of Southern California and the University of California at Los Angeles.

Parents were accused of paying off university officials, helping children cheat on entrance exams and lying about extracurricular accomplishments. U.S. Attorney Andrew Lelling called it the largest college admissions scam prosecuted by the Justice Department.

“These parents are a catalogue of wealth and privilege,” he said Tuesday. “This case is about the widening corruption of elite college admissions through the steady application of wealth combined with fraud. There can be no separate college admission system for the wealthy, and I’ll add there will not be a separate criminal justice system, either.”

In the hours after the announcement, a handful of Trump’s top surrogates took to Twitter to attack and mock the most high-profile parents, including TV stars Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman, ensnared in the FBI’s Operation Varsity Blues.

Donald Trump Jr. joined in, too, quoting a now-deleted Loughlin post in which she said there are more important things in life than money. Trump Jr.’s response: “Hollywood.”

He also tweeted:

But Trump Jr.’s attacks ignore his own family’s history related to higher education.

Although the president and his extended family have not been accused of the kind of fraud that Loughlin and Huffman are alleged to have been part of, news reports and investigations suggest the Trumps used money and connections to ease their access to top schools.

When the president transferred to the University of Pennsylvania’s business school after two years of receiving “respectable” grades at Fordham University, he was able to interview with a “friendly” Wharton admissions officer who was a former classmate of Trump’s older brother, according to Gwenda Blair’s book “The Trumps: Three Generations That Built an Empire.”

According to Tim O’Brien, author of “Trump Nation,” the president has given at least $1.5 million to Wharton, which Trump Jr. and his sister Ivanka also attended. According to the Daily Pennsylvanian, the school’s newspaper, “This string of donations Trump may have made in the late nineties roughly coincides with his children’s enrollment at Penn. Donald J. Trump Jr. began classes at Penn in 1996 and Ivanka Trump in 2000.”

The president’s son-in-law and adviser, Jared Kushner, was allegedly admitted to Harvard only after his father donated millions.

According to Daniel Golden’s “The Price of Admission,” New Jersey real estate developer Charles Kushner pledged $2.5 million to Harvard shortly before his son Jared was admitted to the school. A former official at the Frisch School — Kushner’s high school — told Golden:

“There was no way anybody in the administrative office of the school thought he would on the merits get into Harvard. His GPA did not warrant it, his SAT scores did not warrant it. We thought for sure, there was no way this was going to happen. Then, lo and behold, Jared was accepted. It was a little bit disappointing because there were at the time other kids we thought should really get in on the merits, and they did not.”

Of course, using connections and donations to gain an admissions advantage is not unique to Trump or Kushner. As Slate put it, “The children of influential and wealthy power brokers like former vice president Al Gore or New Jersey real estate developer Charles Kushner often appear to receive preferential treatment from prestigious schools because of a combination of their families’ influence and sizeable donations.” What’s more notable is the way Trump Jr. and his father have effectively sold themselves as outsiders even as they’ve repeatedly benefited from privilege.

 

[AmazonGrace]

Wasn't Fredo supposed to stay out of politics? 

 

[AmazonGrace]

 

[fraurosena]

Turns out Devin Nunes' Cow isn't exclusively snarking Nunes.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

You couldn't make this up: "Donald Trump Jr Just Shared A Porn-Themed Meme Of His Dad That Has Us Cringing So Hard"

Quote

Donald Trump Jr., a man with all the class of a 17-year-old edge-lord, spends his days on Twitter “taking down” Democrats, and he’s been especially “productive” lately since Attorney General William Barr released a summary of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report alleging that Mueller’s office could find no evidence that President Donald Trump colluded with Russian operatives.

No one other than Barr appears to have even seen the report, but that hasn’t stopped Trump Jr. from taking several victory laps. What does an edge-lord do when they’re desperate for attention? Why, post PornHub-inspired memes of their dad, of course.

Like so.

The caption reads: “Orange Man F*cks Entire Democratic Party.”

Gross, right? Others thought so, too.

 

 

[PsyD2013]

Donald Trump Jr. for president - that is scary.  Eric Trump as president is scarier. Thankfully Eric's saying he wants to be president when he grows up.   Our country would not survive a Trump Dynasty.

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/donald-trump-jr-president-doesn-141622117.html

Edited March 28, 2019 by PsyD2013

[Audrey2]

3 hours ago, PsyD2013 said:

Donald Trump Jr. for president - that is scary.  Eric Trump as president is scarier. Thankfully Eric's saying he wants to be president when he grows up.   Our country would not survive a Trump Dynasty.

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/donald-trump-jr-president-doesn-141622117.html

And people thought I was joking when I said Donny Jr in 2024 and 2028, Ivanka in 2032 and 2036, Eric in 2040 and 2044... (Yes, I know there are two more Trump offspring, but I'm going to wait and see if he pays as much attention to Tiffany and Barron as adults as he does his other three. I'm suspecting not, both because of his age and the fact they aren't his first three.) I enjoy reading dystopian and post-apocalyptic literature, not living it.

[GreyhoundFan]

"‘AOC sucks!’: Donald Trump Jr. points his father’s followers to a new villain, and a new rallying cry"

Spoiler

At President Trump’s first rally since the end of the 22-month Russia investigation, his supporters shouted about a woman who is guaranteed not to feature opposite him on the ballot in 2020.

She’s a Democrat, elected to Congress from New York.

It wasn’t only Hillary Clinton — Trump’s adversary since 2016, and the GOP’s since the 1990s — who was irking the crowd in Grand Rapids, Mich., on Thursday. Their calls to “Lock her up!” had quieted.

It was Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — the 29-year-old freshman congresswoman whose social-media megaphone has rallied left-wing Democrats and rocketed her to national stardom — whose name was on their lips. Or, for brevity, AOC.

“AOC sucks!” they cried, breaking into the crude refrain as the president’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., assailed Ocasio-Cortez in warm-up remarks for his father.

“Think about the fact that every mainstream, leading Democratic contender is taking the advice of a freshman congresswoman who three weeks ago didn’t know the three branches of government,” the president’s adult son said, referring to the enthusiasm with which Democratic presidential aspirants have embraced the Green New Deal, the climate plan sponsored by Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.). “I don’t know about you guys, but that’s pretty scary.”

He looked down at his notes to continue, but when he heard the chant, he paused to take it in, his face breaking into a broad grin as he gazed out at the crowd and nodded.

“You guys, you’re not very nice,” he said, pretending to admonish the audience. “And neither is what that policy would do to this country.”

The chant reverberated at the Trump rally as a possible catchphrase for 2020, swapping out one female villain for another. It testified to the first-term congresswoman’s rapid ascent to GOP public enemy No. 1, a position that took Clinton slightly longer to reach.

What’s more, the episode could deepen the battle lines between two hard-nosed militants — and social media savants — who have clashed before, including over a meme suggesting that socialists eat dogs. The decision by Trump’s son to present himself as a foil to the liberal firebrand took on added significance as he pointedly declined to rule out a political bid of his own, telling Fox News host Sean Hannity on Thursday, “I do enjoy it. I like being in the fight.”

Corbin Trent, a spokesman for Ocasio-Cortez, dismissed the 41-year-old as a “minion” for his father.

“I don’t watch garbage television, so I was unaware of it,” Trent said in a phone interview. “When reality TV gets into the White House, then things get a little weird, don’t they?”

In 2016, “Lock her up!” rivaled “Make America great again” and “Build the wall” as a rallying cry of the movement that helped catapult Trump from the set of “The Apprentice” to the Oval Office. The words, which endorse the imprisonment of a political opponent, continue to inflame his base. They issued from an audience as recently as this month, when the president said in remarks at the Conservative Political Action Conference that he was joking when he entreated Russia to hack Clinton’s emails.

The slogan gained currency at the 2016 Republican National Convention in Cleveland, where more graphic barbs were also on display, including T-shirts announcing, “Hillary Sucks, but not like Monica.” The flip side featured the meme, “TRUMP THAT B----!”

The slur against Ocasio-Cortez picked up where the sexualized derision of the former first lady, senator and secretary of state left off. It was a sign of just how much the self-identified democratic socialist, who shares the president’s knack for online engagement, bothers, and yet also fascinates, the GOP.

Fox News commentators deliver grave warnings about her. Conservative writers document what she wears and where she lives. She was the specter haunting CPAC. A Republican senator hauled posters of a machine gun-toting Ronald Reagan and a velociraptor to the floor this week to counter her climate change appeal. And, on the other side of the aisle, a Republican congressman has called her “attractive” and “adorable” and said, in a reference to the way Tinder users make their dating preferences known, that he would “swipe right” on bipartisan cooperation with her.

The congresswoman’s approach to political combat suggests she won’t be caricatured without a fight. A short committee speech this week, in which she responded to criticism of her climate plan and warned, “People are dying,” tore through the Internet. On social media, she fires back at her detractors, taunting, “What have you got left?”

In December, she put the president’s eldest son on notice after he shared a meme with his 1.5 million Instagram followers that included a photograph of her and a suggestion that socialists eat dogs. Her comeback came swiftly: “I have noticed that Junior here has a habit of posting nonsense about me whenever the Mueller investigation heats up,” she wrote. “Please, keep it coming Jr — it’s definitely a ‘very, very large brain’ idea to troll a member of a body that will have subpoena power in a month.”

But it was the president’s son who was gloating Thursday about the outcome of that investigation.

In an interview from Grand Rapids, he told Hannity that his father’s warnings about the so-called “deep state” — the idea that government operatives were working to sabotage his administration — had been vindicated by the summary of a report clearing the president of coordinating with Russia. Yet, it was special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, the alleged exemplar of the deep state, who had cleared him, according to Trump’s attorney general, William P. Barr.

“We are combating it hard,” the president’s son said of the purportedly secret cabal.

Then, Hannity asked him a question that the Fox host said “a lot of people want to know.”

“You know, you’ve been out on the stump a lot lately,” he said, pointing to the “big crowds” he was drawing. “Do you ever think about it, maybe one day you want to run?”

Trump Jr. said he wasn’t ruling it out, especially given how much he enjoys being at the center of his father’s political battles. “I like being in the mix,” he said.

He acknowledged being “the son of a billionaire from New York City,” but said he has “friends in flyover country” with whom he goes hunting and fishing. “I mean, I actually spend much more time here than I do at the rubber-chicken charity dinner circuit in New York City,” he told Hannity. “These are my people. I get it.”

He said he has been proud to watch his father elevate people in “flyover country” and pledged to “keep fighting” on the president’s behalf. “I won’t rule it out for myself, but first things first, we’re going to let him finish up strong,” he concluded, echoing remarks he made Wednesday about his political future to Bloomberg Radio’s “Sound On.”

The acknowledgment by the president’s son that he would consider running for office came as a new book, “Kushner, Inc.,” suggested that the president’s elder daughter, Ivanka, harbors political ambitions of her own.

She has a specific job in mind, according to the author, Vicky Ward: president.

“Ivanka Trump has made no secret of the fact that she wants to be the most powerful woman in the world,” she wrote in the book, according to an excerpt in Town & Country magazine. “Her father’s reign in Washington, D.C., is, she believes, the beginning of a great American dynasty.”

She could have some competition.

Ocasio-Cortez has been mum about her possible next steps. It’s more than five years before the millennial is eligible to be president. For another seven months, she isn’t even entitled to be in the Senate.

But her mother has been less discreet, telling the New York Post last June, “Her aspiration is to be the president.”

 

[GreyhoundFan]

What an insult to mold spores...

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[onekidanddone]

On 3/30/2019 at 6:44 PM, GreyhoundFan said:

What an insult to mold spores...

Did I ever tell you how much I love David Simon?

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Quesay's wife seems to have been spending time with Stephen Miller:

 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

I guess Quesay skipped English classes through the years:

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Cue the twitter meltdown: "Donald Trump Jr. subpoenaed by Senate committee for further testimony on campaign’s Russia contacts"

Spoiler

The Senate Intelligence Committee has issued a subpoena to Donald Trump Jr., the president’s son, seeking additional closed-door testimony as part of lawmakers’ ongoing probe of Russian interference in the U.S. presidential election, according to people familiar with the summons.

Trump Jr. has been a focus of several probes — including special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation — over his involvement in a June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower with a Russian lawyer who promised dirt on the Hillary Clinton campaign. Congressional Democrats believe that, during his previous turns on Capitol Hill, Trump Jr. may have lied to investigators about that meeting and whether he told President Trump that the meeting would take place.

News of the subpoena was first reported by Axios.

Trump Jr. is “exasperated” by the committee’s actions, according to a person who has discussed the subpoena with him, because he already “offered to continue to cooperate in writing.”

“From his view, Don Jr. thinks they just want a PR stunt,” the person said.

But the Intelligence Committee has been trying to schedule a second interview with Trump Jr. for weeks, according to people familiar with the negotiations, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity because the matter is supremely sensitive. The panel is bringing several key witnesses back for second interviews to give lawmakers a chance to question witnesses previously interviewed only by staff.

Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, appeared for a second closed-door interview with the committee in late March. After Mueller’s report was published, Democrats raised concerns that Kushner also may have lied to the House and Senate Intelligence committees about a business associate’s collaboration with a Russian banker close to the Kremlin, talks that centered on revamping U.S.-Russia relations.

But concerns about Trump Jr.’s statements are potentially more problematic for the president. According to a transcript of Trump Jr.’s testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, he told lawmakers that he never told his father about the Trump Tower meeting with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya. Trump Jr.’s testimony to other committees was in line with the account he gave to the Senate Judiciary panel, several Democrats said.

Yet in Mueller’s report, the president’s former lawyer Michael Cohen said that he recalled being in Trump’s office when Trump Jr. told him about a meeting to get “adverse information” on Clinton. Cohen told Mueller’s team that it appeared the two had discussed the subject before.

Mueller never interviewed Trump Jr. Cohen is currently serving a three-year prison term for lying to Congress and financial crimes.

Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), suggested during a Tuesday interview with The Post that he was not inclined to pursue perjury proceedings for Trump Jr., if it is determined that the president’s misrepresented himself to the intelligence panel, as Mueller elected not to charge him.

 

[WiseGirl]

So many reactions...

Snicker, large smile, dance around the kitchen and yell "you're going down now" 

Let this please be the beginning of the end. 

Oh and 45 will be on a rampage defending his "tax shelter" tactic.

[GreyhoundFan]

Udvay should stay off twitter: "U.S. ambassador to Ukraine is recalled after becoming a political target"

Spoiler

The Trump administration has recalled the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine abruptly and ahead of her scheduled departure, after she became a target of political attacks by conservative media outlets and Donald Trump Jr. Democrats see her early departure under pressure as the unfair targeting of a career Foreign Service officer by Team Trump.

According to an internal State Department management notice that I obtained, U.S. Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch will leave her post permanently on May 20, with no replacement in place and no nominations to fill that position. “We expect the Department to appoint a long-term Chargé d’Affaires to lead the mission until a new Chief of Mission is nominated and confirmed,” said the notice, which was sent to all mission personnel at the U.S. Embassy in Kiev. Incoming Deputy Chief of Mission Kristina Kvien plans to arrive in Kiev on May 28, and Joseph Pennington will continue to serve as chargé d’affaires and acting deputy chief through the transition period, the notice said.

A State Department spokesman told me, “Yovanovitch is concluding her three-year diplomatic assignment in Kiev in 2019 as planned.” One senior administration official told me that she had been previously scheduled to depart at the beginning of July and that her new May departure was a change in that plan. Another administration official said that Yovanovitch was given a choice whether to stay until July or leave early and she chose to leave early, due to the ongoing political attacks. Yovanovitch did not respond to a direct request for comment.

“Her confirmed departure date in May aligns with the presidential transition in Ukraine,” the State Department spokesperson said. The senior administration official told me that’s true but irrelevant because the State Department doesn’t rotate ambassadors to align with political transitions in host countries.

The House Democratic leadership thinks that Yovanovitch’s early departure under pressure is a clear sign that the White House is responding to calls from Trump allies, Trump family members and conservative media sites that have accused Yovanovitch, without firm evidence, of being part of a conspiracy that involves anti-corruption probes in Ukraine and efforts by the Trump team to investigate ties between Ukrainian officials and the Hillary Clinton campaign.

“Ambassador Yovanovitch is a dedicated public servant and a diplomat of the highest caliber who has represented the United States under both Republican and Democratic administrations. The White House’s outrageous decision to recall her is a political hit job and the latest in this Administration’s campaign against career State Department personnel,” said a statement released Tuesday morning by House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) and House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Eliot L. Engel (D-N.Y.). “It’s clear that this decision was politically motivated, as allies of President Trump had joined foreign actors in lobbying for the Ambassador’s dismissal.”

On March 24, Donald Trump Jr. tweeted that Yovanovitch was a “joker,” and he linked to an article in the Daily Wire headlined “Calls Grow To Remove Obama’s U.S. Ambassador To Ukraine.” That article is a roundup of conservative media figures leveling thinly sourced allegations against Yovanovitch on Fox News. Former federal prosecutor Joe diGenova said on Fox that she had “bad mouthed the President of the United States to Ukrainian officials.” Fox News’ Laura Ingraham reported that former congressmen Pete Sessions (R-Tex.) wrote to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to say that Yovanovitch “reportedly demonstrated clear anti-Trump bias.”

Four days before Don Jr.’s tweet, the Hill’s John Solomon published an interview with Ukrainian Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko, who alleged that Yovanovitch had given him a “do not prosecute list,” ostensibly to protect Obama-Clinton allies, back in 2016. The State Department told Solomon that that allegation was “an outright fabrication.”

Lutsenko also told Solomon that he would open up an investigation into allegations that the Ukrainian government helped the Clinton campaign in 2016, perhaps by providing information on corrupt payments from the administration of then-President Viktor Yanukovych to former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort.

Last week, the New York Times reported that Lutsenko has met with President Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani multiple times in New York this year. Lutsenko also told Solomon that he was reopening an investigation into Burisma Holdings, an energy company owned by a Ukrainian oligarch that for a time had Hunter Biden, son of Joe Biden, on its board.

Solomon wrote a column on April 1 drawing connections between Biden’s work to fight corruption in Ukraine as vice president and his son’s interest in Burisma. The allegation is that Biden pressured Kiev to fire Lutsenko’s predecessor in an effort to stop the Burisma probe. Initially, Lutsenko had cleared Burisma of any wrongdoing, but he told Solomon that he had reopened the investigation.

The Times also reported that the case had been reopened. “Some see [Lutsenko’s] decision as an effort to curry favor with the Trump administration,” the Times reported. On Tuesday, Bloomberg quoted Lutsenko’s own spokesperson saying that the case had not been reopened.

Biden has said he never discussed Burisma or his son’s business with Ukrainian officials. Bloomberg also reported that the case against Burisma had been shelved at least a year before Biden called for the firing of the general prosecutor at the time, which undermines the theory that he was trying to influence that investigation. The Biden campaign declined to comment. Trump campaign spokeswoman Erin Perrine doubled down on the accusation that Biden tried to intervene in Ukraine on behalf of his son and Burisma, sending me a statement Tuesday accusing Biden of “blackmailing a foreign government to drop an investigation.”

As for Ambassador Yovanovitch, several officials told me that she was indeed involved in and strongly supportive of Ukraine’s anti-corruption efforts. But there’s no public evidence that she was directly involved in anything related to Burisma, Manafort or providing information to the Clinton campaign that would help it against the Trump campaign.

The clear and coordinated effort to smear a sitting U.S. ambassador has now resulted in her early departure under attack after 33 years of service to administrations in both parties. But that’s just the beginning of the larger effort to create a cacophony of allegations by the Trump team and its allies to highlight Ukraine to attack Biden, help Manafort and re-litigate the 2016 election.