Trump 31: Parody of a Presidency

[onekidanddone]

And nobody in the FoxSpews studio knew enough to pull the plug mid interview?

[Cartmann99]

12 minutes ago, onekidanddone said:

And nobody in the FoxSpews studio knew enough to pull the plug mid interview?

You'd think that the host or hosts of each show would have some sort of prearranged signal or code word they say that means to shut it down. 

 @JMarie, Our Lady of Faux, will keep us informed if Hannity starts tapping out messages in Morse code or yelling about foot fungus.

[Cartmann99]

 

Quote

Republican National Committee members voted Thursday to eliminate the body's debate committee, a small but meaningful change signaling that Republicans do not plan to sanction any primary debates in the upcoming presidential election cycle.

The move could also serve as a warning to would-be Republican rivals of President Donald Trump about his strong support among party loyalists, at a moment when his approval ratings have ticked up but still remain relatively low compared with those of past presidents, leaving him politically vulnerable.

 

 

 

 

[Howl]

NBC, ABC are retracting the story that Cohen was wiretapped. 

[AmazonGrace]

 

[AmazonGrace]

 

[Howl]

Quote

Trump signed an executive order creating a new "faith initiative," which could potentially encourage discrimination against LGBT people in the name of religion.

This came up last year in the aftermath of Harvey in Houston.  At least one church wanted in on the Federal financial action, and were pissed off that they were blocked.  This is scary, scary, scary and exactly why Teavangelicals are lining up to kiss Trump's ass. 

And the MediCaid work requirements for Native Americans?  Read that article carefully.  It's a total disaster.  Think about how this might apply to remote Native communities in, say, Alaska. 

To wrap up another brilliant Infrastructure Week, Josh Marshall in yesterday's editor's blog at Talking Points Memo referred to Giuliani's talk show rounds as a clusterf*ck.  It's early Friday, so additional manna could drop from the sky in, say, the form of more subpoenas.   

[GreyhoundFan]

A good one from Eugene Robinson: "A sour smell of panic in the White House as the law closes in"

Spoiler

That unpleasant odor wafting from the direction of the White House is the sour smell of panic, as the president’s lies threaten to unravel — and the law closes in.

The new public face of President Trump’s legal defense, Rudolph W. Giuliani, looked and sounded like a man in need of an intervention Wednesday night as he went on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show — the friendliest possible terrain — and revealed that what Trump has tried to make the nation believe about a $130,000 hush-money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels is a total crock.

You will recall that last month, when asked aboard Air Force One if he knew about the payment, Trump emphatically said no. He added, “You’ll have to ask Michael Cohen. Michael is my attorney.” Trump gave the impression of having no idea where Cohen got the money to pay Daniels.

Not true, Giuliani told a puzzled Hannity: “That money was not campaign money. Sorry, I’m giving you a fact now that you don’t know. It’s not campaign money. No campaign finance violation. . . . [It was] funneled through a law firm and the president repaid it.”

Just a suggestion, but if Giuliani wants to convince special counsel Robert S. Mueller III that there’s nothing here to see, he probably should avoid using words like “funneled.”

In the Hannity interview, Giuliani said of the $130,000 payment that Trump “didn’t know about the specifics of it, as far as I know. But he did know about the general arrangement, that Michael would take care of things like this, like I take care of things like this with my clients. I don’t burden them with every single thing that comes along. These are busy people.’’

That makes me curious about Giuliani’s client list. But I digress.

Trump offered elaboration but not clarification Thursday morning on Twitter. The original story — I know nothing, go ask Michael — morphed into a three-tweet exercise in trying to thread a needle with a hunk of rope:

“Mr. Cohen, an attorney, received a monthly retainer, not from the campaign and having nothing to do with the campaign, from which he entered into, through reimbursement, a private contract between two parties, known as a non-disclosure agreement, or NDA. These agreements are . . . very common among celebrities and people of wealth. In this case it is in full force and effect and will be used in Arbitration for damages against Ms. Clifford (Daniels). The agreement was used to stop the false and extortionist accusations made by her about an affair, . . . despite already having signed a detailed letter admitting that there was no affair. Prior to its violation by Ms. Clifford and her attorney, this was a private agreement. Money from the campaign, or campaign contributions, played no roll [sic] in this transaction.”

So many words, so much squirming, so little truth.

One thing, and only one thing, is clear from this orchestrated attempt to change the narrative about Daniels. Trump is worried that the payment — which prevented a potential scandal just days before the 2016 election — might constitute an illegal campaign donation if Cohen used his own funds, as he has claimed, and was not reimbursed.

Some experts say there may have been a violation even if Trump’s carefully worded (for him) tweetstorm is true. But if Cohen’s “retainer” was really an attempt to hide the payment and structure the reimbursement so as not to rouse suspicion among banking regulators, Trump and Cohen may be in more legal jeopardy from the new story than from the old.

Nice work, Rudy.

This latest development on the Daniels front is just one of several signs that the investigation of Trump and the pushback against it have entered a new, more acrimonious phase.

Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein, who oversees the Mueller probe, vowed this week that “the Department of Justice is not going to be extorted” by Republican House members who threaten to impeach him for not shutting Mueller down. It was revealed that Mueller has warned that he can serve the president with a grand jury subpoena if Trump does not agree to a voluntary interview. And the loudest voice on the president’s legal team advocating a conciliatory approach, attorney Ty Cobb, announced Wednesday that he is “retiring.” His replacement, Emmet Flood of the powerhouse Williams & Connolly firm, represented Bill Clinton in his battle against impeachment.

There is no reason to believe Mueller’s investigation is anywhere near its end. But the ground rules have changed: From now on, it seems, biting and gouging are allowed.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[samira_catlover]

12 hours ago, Howl said:

NBC, ABC are retracting the story that Cohen was wiretapped. 

DC area news indicates they did not wiretap (allowing them to listen in on conversations), but they DID get a device (think it's called a pen register) that allows tracking of phone numbers for calls taken in or made out.

[Cartmann99]

Dear Leader lied to the press again:

He's now on his way to Dallas to give a speech to the NRA. His speech is scheduled for 12:45pm local time. Apologies in advance to those of you in Dallas. The speech will be live streamed on

Quote

YouTube, and the cable networks will likely carry it as well.

Sorry about the quote box. I hit the wrong button.

 

 

[fraurosena]

 

[47of74]

Figures

Quote

resident Trump is appointing a number of sports celebrities, including New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick, to his "Council on Sports, Fitness, and Nutrition," Axios has learned. 

Why this matters: Trump signed an executive order in February to rebrand the council so that it's more focused on encouraging kids to take up sports — a theme Ivanka Trump highlightedat the Winter Olympics. 

President Obamacalled his version of the group the "Council on Fitness, Sports, and Nutrition." Under the Obama administration, the council focused more on nutrition and Michelle Obama's quest to make school lunches healthier.

What's new:According to a source with direct knowledge, alongside Belichick, Trump will also appoint golfer Natalie Gulbis, three-time Olympic beach volleyball gold medalist Misty May-Treanor, retired Major League Baseball pitcher Mariano Rivera, retired NFL running back Herschel Walker, and Dr. Mehmet Oz.

 

[AmazonGrace]

 The real lawyers had a talk with him I guess

 Does, "Oh my goodness" sound like something Trump would ever say?

 

[fraurosena]

His interview was once again a veritable gold mine of idiocy. But sometimes it's not about what he says that makes the interview noteworthy.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"We filed a complaint about Trump’s ethics. Giuliani made it possible."

Spoiler

Like doctors, lawyers operate with a principle in mind: First, do no harm.

Rudolph W. Giuliani, President Trump’s newly hired attorney, violated that rule repeatedly in Wednesday night’s interview with Fox News Channel’s Sean Hannity and in subsequent statements. Giuliani’s performance left the president exposed to possible liability for campaign finance, ethics and false statements violations — and for good measure deepened Trump’s obstruction of justice peril as well.

Giuliani’s most explosive revelations related to the $130,000 payment Trump’s “fixer” Michael Cohen made to adult-film star Stormy Daniels for her silence about an alleged affair she had with Trump. Until a couple of days ago, the president and his aides had responded to questions about the hush money by saying that the president knew nothing of it.

Our watchdog group filed a complaint with the Department of Justice and the Office of Government Ethics on Thursday, asking officials to investigate whether Giuliani’s disclosures show that Trump violated federal ethics laws or laws against making false statements. The Ethics in Government Act requires filers of public financial disclosure forms, including the president, to disclose any liabilities worth more than $10,000. Giuliani repeatedly acknowledged on Wednesday and Thursday that Trump owed Cohen $250,000, accounting for the $130,000 payment to Daniels and associated taxes and fees. But Trump’s public financial disclosure report last summer didn’t list any debts to Cohen. A knowing failure to report such a debt constitutes a federal crime, and failure to properly report that liability can result in penalties up to $50,000, as well as imprisonment. Moreover, lying on a financial disclosure report can be the basis for federal false statements charges under 18 USC 1001.

That complaint built on an earlier one we had filed, raising the question of whether Trump had an undisclosed liability to Cohen. In his attempt to advocate for his client, Giuliani seemingly confirmed that supposition. Federal authorities should investigate, including Robert Khuzami, the deputy U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. He and the public integrity section of that office are investigating Cohen for the Daniels payment and other issues, and this acknowledged loan fits neatly with that. Alternatively, Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein could assign it elsewhere, including to special counsel Robert S. Mueller III.

If federal authorities decide to act based on Giuliani’s comments — and they should be giving a serious look to see whether such action is merited — he left them other threads to follow, too.

Cohen was in some legal jeopardy because if he had paid Daniels out of his own funds, that might mean he had knowingly made an in-kind campaign contribution well in excess of the $2,700 limit per election to a federal candidate. But that story had at least distanced Trump from that or other alleged violations.

Giuliani swept all that away when he disclosed that the payment to Daniels was “funneled . . . through a law firm and the president repaid it . . . over a period of several months.” Trump, apparently, had paid Cohen a retainer of $35,000 a month starting sometime after the election and continuing until the president had paid his longtime fixer between $460,000 and $470,000, which also covered interest, reimbursement for what Giuliani called “incidental expenses,” and perhaps profit as well as payment for other work related to the campaign. All of that contradicts the president’s unequivocal denial last month that he knew anything about the payment to Daniels.

Giuliani is advancing the defense that because campaign money was not used to pay Daniels, there is no problem. That is a red herring. The problem with the transaction was always the fact that it was money from outside the campaign being spent for a campaign-related purpose: preventing Daniels from speaking during the final weeks of the campaign about her alleged affair with Trump.

By revealing the repayment scheme, Giuliani implicated Trump in Cohen’s apparent misconduct. Even the best-case scenario — that the president in effect made a six-figure contribution to his own campaign — is an apparent violation of law because it was undisclosed. Should the facts continue to develop in this unflattering direction for Trump (and who really believes that the whole truth has come out?), prosecutors may find themselves contemplating more aggressive theories such as whether the president aided and abetted criminal activity by Cohen or conspired with him to break the law and cover it up — and these directions are only possible thanks to Trump’s new lawyer, still in his first week on the job.

As if all that were not bad enough, there was a third area of Trump’s exposure that Giuliani deepened: obstruction of justice. Here Giuliani harmed his client by offering that the president “fired [former FBI director James] Comey because Comey would not, among other things, say that he wasn’t a target of the investigation.” Far from exculpating Trump, this assertion could constitute evidence that the president was acting with the corrupt intent necessary to establish obstruction. What could be more emblematic of wrongful purpose than a demand to curtail a federal law enforcement matter prematurely and out of self-interest? Comey naturally refused to make a public announcement that Trump was not a target; at best, that would create troubling optics, and at worst, it would short-circuit the investigation that was and is ongoing.

Also damning was that Giuliani’s new justification comes on top of earlier, differing rationales. Shifting explanations for a person’s actions can be evidence of his corrupt intent, and for good reason: When a person keeps identifying new motives, it increases the likelihood that one or all of the explanations offered are not honest. Recall that initially the White House justified Comey’s firing on the grounds that he mishandled the investigation of Hillary Clinton. Then within days, Trump said that he fired Comey because of the “Russia thing.” He even reportedly had the audacity to tell Russian officials in the Oval Office that he “faced great pressure because of Russia. That’s taken off.”

So, thanks to Giuliani’s catastrophic performance, yet another fresh start for Trump’s legal team has been squandered. The president and his attorneys are running empty on credibility. Replenishing it becomes impossible at some point after repeated miscues. If prosecutors, judges and even the American people no longer believe what Trump and his lawyers say is true, they will assume the worst. Contrasted with the methodical and straightforward approach of the Department of Justice, this is beginning to feel like a war that the president is not going to win.

 

[Cartmann99]

Trump's little show to the media today was just sad. If they are damned and determined to sell us complete bullshit, then at least do us the favor of coming up with something entertaining like Trump being pregnant with Elvis's baby.

 

 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Trump gives a new political cachet to the criminal class"

Spoiler

When he accepted the Republican nomination for president, Donald Trump pronounced himself the “law and order candidate.”

Instead, he has bestowed a new political cachet on the criminal class.

Sure, the mention of Hillary Clinton’s name can still provoke chants of “Lock her up!” at Trump’s rallies. And the president continues to blame immigrants for the imaginary violent crime wave that he says is gripping the nation.

But an actual criminal record has become a badge of kinship with a president who constantly rails about witch hunts, a rigged system and prosecutors run amok. It is also the latest evidence that Trump has taken us all to a place that seems beyond parody.

This year’s election has produced the spectacle two recently freed inmates — ex-congressman Michael Grimm (R-N.Y.) and former West Virginia coal baron Don Blankenship — running for Congress while proudly touting their time behind bars as bona fides.

“You know, I’ve had a little personal experience with the Department of Justice. They lie a lot too,” Blankenship said Tuesday night, when asked during a GOP Senate debate whether he thought Trump should be allowed to fire special counsel Robert S. Mueller III.

The Morgantown, W.Va., audience erupted in applause and laughter at this reference to Blankenship’s conviction on misdemeanor charges stemming from the nation’s deadliest mine disaster in four decades.

That same evening, in Tempe, Ariz., Vice President Pence was slathering praise on former Maricopa County sheriff Joe Arpaio as a “tireless champion of strong borders and the rule of law.”

A federal judge in 2017 thought differently, when she found Arpaio guilty of criminal contempt of court for his “flagrant disregard” of an order to stop racially profiling Latinos in traffic stops. Trump pardoned the 85-year-old Arpaio, sparing him what could have been six months in jail. His get-out-of-jail-free card in hand, Arpaio announced he was running for the Senate to “bring some new blood to Washington.”

Arpaio has become a sought-after fundraiser for other Republican candidates. So has former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who awaits his own sentencing for lying to the FBI. If Trump is ultimately found to have obstructed justice in the ongoing Russia probe, the original sin will have been his efforts to get then-FBI Director James B. Comey to back off his investigation of Flynn for having made false statements about conversations with the Russian ambassador.

“So General Michael Flynn’s life can be totally destroyed while Shadey [sic] James Comey can Leak and Lie and make lots of money from a third rate book (that should never have been written),” Trump tweeted last month. “Is that really the way life in America is supposed to work? I don’t think so!”

The destruction of Flynn’s life seems something less than total. He will be the star attraction May 6, when he appears with Senate candidate Troy Downing in Montana. As my colleague Michael Scherer reported, Flynn has a good time in store: “He plans to shoot skeet, dine with donors and hold a rally in the state, where select VIPs will be offered a chance to take their picture with him.”

Grimm, meanwhile, is trying to win back his old Staten Island House seat after serving eight months for tax fraud and other offenses. He has been shunned by local Republican leaders. But some polls are showing him ahead of Rep. Daniel Donovan, the Republican who replaced him.

On Monday night, Grimm jubilantly announced that Anthony Scaramucci, who did a brief and embarrassing stint as Trump White House communications director, will headline a money-raising event for him on May 19.

“Excited to welcome former White House comms director and one of our President’s staunchest allies, Anthony Scaramucci, to Staten Island on May 19! You don’t want to miss it,” Grimm tweeted.

The person who has made this whole trip through the looking glass possible is a president who promised in his convention acceptance speech that he would “work with, and appoint, the best prosecutors and law enforcement officials to get the job done.”

Instead, Trump has demonized those very people — and the institutions they represent. In doing so, he has bestowed martyrhood on criminals, at least those who are his cronies and his clones.

The question now is whether voters can still tell the difference between the good guys and the bad guys.

 

[Gobsmacked]

My  guess is that Mr Guiliani will be handed his exit papers first thing next week. 

[Cartmann99]

Huh?

 

[onekidanddone]

50 minutes ago, Cartmann99 said:

Huh?

 

Didn't he say the government should take people's guns and worry about due process later?

[Howl]

7 hours ago, samira_catlover said:

DC area news indicates they did not wiretap (allowing them to listen in on conversations), but they DID get a device (think it's called a pen register) that allows tracking of phone numbers for calls taken in or made out.

Yes, that is correct. Sadly, no tapes, but you get what you get.  However, Mueller can now ask some very pointed questions about those phone calls, because he ask about what was discussed.  

[Howl]

 

[hoipolloi]

This tweet thread is highly relevant:

 

[fraurosena]

How far -- or rather, how low -- the presidunce is willing to go to nix the Iran arms deal. I'm no expert in this, and I'd like to know who ultimately stands to gain from it. Could it be Russia, perchance?

Revealed: Trump team hired spy firm for ‘dirty ops’ on Iran arms deal

Quote

Israeli agency told to find incriminating material on Obama diplomats who negotiated deal with Tehran

Aides to Donald Trump, the US president, hired an Israeli private intelligence agency to orchestrate a “dirty ops” campaign against key individuals from the Obama administration who helped negotiate the Iran nuclear deal, the Observer can reveal.

People in the Trump camp contacted private investigators in May last year to “get dirt” on Ben Rhodes, who had been one of Barack Obama’s top national security advisers, and Colin Kahl, deputy assistant to Obama, as part of an elaborate attempt to discredit the deal.

The extraordinary revelations come days before Trump’s 12 May deadline to either scrap or continue to abide by the international deal limiting Iran’s nuclear programme.

Jack Straw, who as foreign secretary was involved in earlier efforts to restrict Iranian weapons, said: “These are extraordinary and appalling allegations but which also illustrate a high level of desperation by Trump and [the Israeli prime minister] Benjamin Netanyahu, not so much to discredit the deal but to undermine those around it.”

One former high-ranking British diplomat with wide experience of negotiating international peace agreements, requesting anonymity, said: “It’s bloody outrageous to do this. The whole point of negotiations is to not play dirty tricks like this.”

Sources said that officials linked to Trump’s team contacted investigators days after Trump visited Tel Aviv a year ago, his first foreign tour as US president. Trump promised Netanyahu that Iran would never have nuclear weapons and suggested that the Iranians thought they could “do what they want” since negotiating the nuclear deal in 2015. A source with details of the “dirty tricks campaign” said: “The idea was that people acting for Trump would discredit those who were pivotal in selling the deal, making it easier to pull out of it.”

According to incendiary documents seen by the Observer, investigators contracted by the private intelligence agency were told to dig into the personal lives and political careers of Rhodes, a former deputy national security adviser for strategic communications, and Kahl, a national security adviser to the former vice-president Joe Biden. Among other things they were looking at personal relationships, any involvement with Iran-friendly lobbyists, and if they had benefited personally or politically from the peace deal.

Investigators were also apparently told to contact prominent Iranian Americans as well as pro-deal journalists – from the New York Times, MSNBC television, the Atlantic, Vox website and Haaretz, the Israeli newspaper among others – who had frequent contact with Rhodes and Kahl in an attempt to establish whether they had violated any protocols by sharing sensitive intelligence. They are believed to have looked at comments made by Rhodes in a 2016 New York Times profile in which he admitted relying on inexperienced reporters to create an “echo chamber” that helped sway public opinion to secure the deal. It is also understood that the smear campaign wanted to establish if Rhodes was among those who backed a request by Susan Rice, Obama’s final national security adviser, to unmask the identities of Trump transition officials caught up in the surveillance of foreign targets.

Although sources have confirmed that contact and an initial plan of attack was provided to private investigators by representatives of Trump, it is not clear how much work was actually undertaken, for how long or what became of any material unearthed.

Neither is it known if the black ops constituted only a strand of a wider Trump-Netanyahu collaboration to undermine the deal or if investigators targeted other individuals such as John Kerry, the lead American signatory to the deal. Both Rhodes and Kahl said they had no idea of the campaign against them. Rhodes said: “I was not aware, though sadly am not surprised. I would say that digging up dirt on someone for carrying out their professional responsibilities in their positions as White House officials is a chillingly authoritarian thing to do.”

A spokesman for the White House’s national security council offered “no comment” when approached. However, the revelations are not the first time that claims of “dirty tricks” have been aimed at the Trump camp. Special counsel Robert Mueller is leading an investigation into apparent attempts by Trump’s inner-circle to dig up damaging information on Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential campaign.

Of particular interest is a meeting involving the US president’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr, his brother-in-law Jared Kushner and then-campaign chair Paul Manafort and a Kremlin-connected Russian lawyer who had promised damaging information about Clinton.

Trump has repeatedly signalled his intention to scrap the Iran deal, denouncing it as “the worst deal ever.” In a January speech the US president accused his predecessor of having “curried favour with the Iranian regime in order to push through the disastrously flawed Iran nuclear deal.”

Last Monday, Netanyahu, accused Iran of continuing to hide and expand its nuclear weapons know-how after the 2015 deal, presenting what he claimed was “new and conclusive proof” of violations.

However, European powers including Britain responded by saying the Israeli prime minister’s claims reinforced the need to keep the deal.

On Thursday the UN secretary general Antonio Guterres urged Trump not to walk away from the deal, warning that there was a real risk of war if the 2015 agreement was not preserved. The following day details emerged of some unusual shadow diplomacy by Kerry, meeting a top-ranking Iranian official in New York to discuss how to preserve the deal.

It was the second time in around two months that Kerry had met foreign minister Javad Zarif to apparently strategise over rescuing a pact they spent years negotiating during the Obama administration. Straw, who was foreign secretary between 2001 and 2006, said: “The campaign against the JCPOA has been characterised by abuse and misinformation. It is the best chance of ensuring Iran never develops a nuclear weapons programme, and it is insane to suggest abandoning the deal could do anything but endanger international security.”