Trump 41: Waiting For My Impeachment

[GreyhoundFan]

"Trump ordered attack on Iran for downing drone, then called it off, citing casualties"

Spoiler

DUBAI — President Trump ordered an attack on Iran on Thursday in retaliation for the downing of a surveillance drone in the Strait of Hormuz but called the operation off just before it was due to occur because it would have caused extensive casualties, he said Friday.

In a series of morning tweets, Trump said he called off strikes on three Iranian sites minutes before they were to be launched because he was informed of the likely loss of life among Iranians.

“We were cocked & loaded to retaliate last night on 3 different sights when I asked, how many will die,” Trump tweeted. “150 people, sir, was the answer from a General. 10 minutes before the strike I stopped it.”

Such a death toll was “not proportionate to shooting down an unmanned drone,” Trump wrote, adding: “I am in no hurry, our Military is rebuilt, new, and ready to go, by far the best in the world. Sanctions are biting & more added last night. Iran can NEVER have Nuclear Weapons, not against the USA, and not against the WORLD!”

Iran said Friday the United States had “no justification” for a retaliatory strike and vowed to respond “firmly” to any U.S. military action. 

Trump administration officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive national security decisions, said the president approved the strikes after Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps earlier in the day shot down a Navy RQ-4 Global Hawk operating off Iran’s southern coast, a move Trump described as a “very big mistake.”

But he later changed his mind, the officials said. The decision was first reported by the New York Times. 

Trump’s Friday morning tweets appeared to gloss over the fact that he was the one, as commander in chief, who had ordered the retaliatory strike against Iran in the first place.

The commander of the Revolutionary Guard’s aerospace division said Friday that Iran had sent “warnings” to the drone before shooting it down. In an interview with Iran’s state-controlled broadcaster, Brig. Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh said a final warning was sent at 3:55 a.m. local time Thursday.

“When it did not redirect its route and continued flying toward and into our territory, we had to shoot it at 4:05 a.m.,” he said. “Our national security is a red line.” 

He also said that a U.S. P-8 patrol aircraft, with 35 people on board, had accompanied the drone into Iranian airspace. His claim could not immediately be verified.

“We could have downed it, too,” Hajizadeh said of the plane, the Fars News Agency reported. “But we did not do it.”

Iranian state television Friday published images that it said showed pieces of the drone recovered from the debris field. The photographs, which showed large fragments of what appeared to be an aircraft, could not be independently authenticated.

Iranian officials told the Reuters news agency Friday that Tehran received a message from Trump through Oman overnight warning that a U.S. attack was imminent.

“Trump said he was against any war with Iran and wanted to talk to Tehran about various issues,” Reuters quoted one official as saying. “He gave a short period of time to get our response.” The official added that it was up to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to decide whether to respond.

Iran’s permanent mission to the United Nations did not immediately reply to request for comment.

The Federal Aviation Administration late Thursday barred U.S.-registered aircraft from operating over the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman, due to an increase in military activities and political tensions that it said might “place commercial flights at risk.” 

Several U.S. and international carriers said that they had either canceled flights over Iranian airspace or were taking steps to avoid the Strait of Hormuz. 

The aborted operation to strike Iran capped a day in which news of the drone’s downing heaped fuel on already heightened fears that the United States and Iran were on a course toward a military conflict as each side blamed the other for the incident.

Tehran and Washington gave conflicting accounts of what occurred when the drone with an airliner’s wingspan crashed into the sea. While Iran said the aircraft had entered its airspace, the U.S. Central Command denied that assertion, characterizing the incident as an “unprovoked attack” over one of the world’s most important commercial waterways.

In remarks alongside visiting Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at the White House, Trump condemned the shoot-down but also appeared to tamp down speculation that a counterstrike might be in the works, saying the drone may have been shot down without the knowledge of Iranian leaders.

“I’m not just talking about the country made a mistake. I’m talking about somebody under the command of that country made a mistake,” Trump said at the White House. “I find it hard to believe it was intentional” on the part of Iran’s top officials, the president said.

Trump was noncommittal about a U.S. counterattack. “Let’s see what happens,” he said. “This is a new fly in the ointment — what happened, shooting down the drone — and this country will not stand for it.”

The White House invited a bipartisan group of top congressional leaders to a meeting Thursday afternoon to discuss the situation.

Among those invited were Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and the chairmen and ranking minority party members of the House and Senate Intelligence and Armed Services committees.

“We had a good briefing,” McConnell said, adding that he could confirm that an unmanned aerial vehicle “was fired on from Iranian soil and it was in international waters. And beyond that I think the administration is engaged in what I would call measured responses.”

Schumer said he cautioned that “these conflicts have a way of escalating.”

“The president may not intend to go to war here, but we’re worried that he and the administration may bumble into a war,” he said. “One of the best ways to avoid bumbling into war, a war that nobody wants, is to have a robust open debate and for Congress to have a real say. We learned that lesson in the run-up to Iraq” in 2003.

After the White House meeting, Pelosi held a closed-door session with Democratic lawmakers to brief them on the developments. “We know that the high-tension wires are up there, and we must do everything we can not to escalate the situation, but also to make sure that our personnel in the region are safe,” she said.

Thursday’s strike followed a number of recent incidents, including attacks on oil tankers, that American officials have depicted as part of an Iranian effort to hurt the United States and its allies in the region. The United States has continued its “maximum pressure” campaign against a country the Trump administration has identified as its main adversary in the Middle East.

Tehran has responded with defiance to the campaign, which was launched after Trump withdrew the United States from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal and has included designating the Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist group and taking steps to cut off Iranian oil sales.

On Thursday, the European Union said officials from Germany, Britain, France, Russia, China and Iran would meet next week to discuss strategies to salvage the nuclear pact despite renewed U.S. sanctions and Tehran’s threat to exceed limits on its uranium stockpiles.

Saudi Arabia’s deputy defense minister said Friday on Twitter that he met with Brian Hook, the State Department’s special representative for Iran, in Riyadh “to explore the latest efforts to counter hostile Iranian acts.”

The Revolutionary Guard’s top commander, Maj. Gen. Hossein Salami, called the downing of the drone “a clear message to America.”

“Our borders are Iran’s red line, and we will react strongly against any aggression,” Salami said in remarks carried by Iranian state television. “Iran is not seeking war with any country, but we are fully prepared to defend Iran.”

Nearly a quarter of the world’s traded oil passes through the Strait of Hormuz, which connects Middle East energy producers to markets around the globe.

Lt. Gen. Joseph Guastella, head of U.S. air forces in the Middle East, told reporters at the Pentagon that the Global Hawk was flying at high altitude in the vicinity of recent tanker attacks and was not at any time any closer than 21 miles to the nearest point on Iran’s coast.

Guastella said the aircraft did not leave international airspace and was brought down by a Republican Guard surface-to-air missile fired from an area close to Goruk, Iran.

“This dangerous and escalatory attack was irresponsible and occurred in the vicinity of established air corridors between Dubai, UAE, and Muscat, Oman, possibly endangering innocent civilians,” he said. Guastella did not take questions, and the Pentagon did not make anyone else available to discuss the tensions.

The Global Hawk incident occurred the week after two tankers, one Japanese and one Norwegian, were attacked in the Gulf of Oman. The Trump administration has blamed Iran for both incidents, at least one of which is said to have been carried out by use of limpet mine similar to devices previously displayed at Iranian military parades. Iran has denied involvement, calling the accusation “a lie.”

The tanker incidents were similar to an attack on a tanker off the United Arab Emirates in May. The U.S. military also accused Iran of firing a modified SA-7 surface-to-air missile at an MQ-9 Reaper drone over the Gulf of Oman as it surveilled the attack on the Japanese ship.

Also this month, Centcom said Houthi rebels shot down an MQ-9 over Yemen using an SA-6 surface-to-air missile in an attack that “was enabled by Iranian assistance.”

The latest incident came just days before acting defense secretary Patrick Shanahan was due to step down. Shanahan, who this week withdrew from his confirmation process after news media, including The Washington Post, published reports about past family strife, is handing responsibility for the military to Mark Esper, who now serves as Army secretary.

It is unclear how the turnover at the top of the Pentagon will affect an internal debate about how to respond to what officials say is an attempt to strike American interests. Some defense officials have voiced concerns that officials led by national security adviser John Bolton, who has publicly advocated regime change in Iran in the past, may be creating conditions in which war is inevitable.

Trump has previously authorized targeted strikes in the Middle East, including on government-controlled air bases in Syria. He was elected in 2016 promising to end American involvement in conflicts in the region. 

At the same time, the Pentagon remains concerned about the potential for Iranian attacks on U.S. military personnel, especially those stationed in Iraq. During a visit to Baghdad last month, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo sought to relay a message for Iranian leaders that even one American death would result in a U.S. counterattack. 

Trump appeared to tamp down the likelihood of an immediate military response as he highlighted the fact that the Global Hawk was unmanned. “We had nobody in the drone,” he said. “It would have made a big difference, let me tell you.”

Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) tweeted, “When it comes to the Middle East, there are seldom good choices.”

“But in some instances, failing to act can prove to be the most dangerous choice of all,” he said.

A U.S. official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said U.S. naval assets were trying to recover pieces of the drone.

The strike on the RQ-4 is much more significant than the recent attacks on Reapers. Each Global Hawk, which has a wingspan of 131 feet, is worth more than $100 million and is packed with sensors and able to fly at altitudes of more than 55,000 feet to observe broad areas for periods that can stretch longer than a day.

The Global Hawk downed on Thursday was an older “demonstrator” model, according to another U.S. official, that had been transferred from the Air Force to the Navy to carry out a mission known as Broad Area Maritime Surveillance. The Pentagon has since begun testing a newer cousin, the MQ-4C Triton. Neither version carries weapons.

According to a Republican Guard statement, the U.S. drone took off from a base in the “southern Persian Gulf” and was heading toward Iran’s Chabahar port “in full secrecy, violating the rules of international aviation.”

“While returning to the western Hormuz Strait’s region, the drone violated Iran’s airspace and engaged in information-gathering and spying,” the statement said.

At its narrowest, the Strait of Hormuz is just 21 nautical miles wide, and ships passing through it must enter the territorial waters of Iran and Oman. Under the rule of the shah in 1959, Iran extended its territorial waters to 12 nautical miles and declared that it would recognize only “innocent passage” through the area, essentially excluding warships engaging in activities deemed hostile. Oman also claimed a 12-mile territorial limit in 1972 and later demanded that foreign warships obtain permission to pass through its waters.

The United States does not recognize any restrictions on transit through the strait.

 

[laPapessaGiovanna]

17 hours ago, fraurosena said:

Huh. First Trump tweets this:

Then this happened:

And therefore this followed:

 

He isn't Putin's puppet folks! He's his asswipe!

[Smash!]

@GreyhoundFan  thanks for the article, I just came here to post it as well.
I sound like a broken record, this is scary as hell but not unsurprising. I remained relatively calm during Fuckfaces presidency but now I‘m really scared.
Another thought on Iran: Another reason to start war with Iran is that new refugee crisis in Europe will strengthen the populists and move Europe even further to the right. Which is in the spirit of the right-wing hardliners in the USA and Putin.
Here‘s a comic       @GreyhoundFan posted some time ago in another thread which is so accurate

Edited June 21, 2019 by HerNameIsBuffy
Formatting didn’t work for tags so I fixed them. No content changes.

[GreyhoundFan]

General Fuckface McBonespurs strikes again: "Trump threatens reporter with prison time during interview"

Spoiler

President Trump, in an interview this week and on Twitter on Friday morning, again suggested criminal action against American journalists.

During a sit-down interview with Time magazine, Trump showed the reporters a letter from North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. When a photographer tried to snap a photograph of the letter, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders told him he couldn’t.

Later in the interview, the subject turned to special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s report on Russian interference in the 2016 campaign, and a reporter asked about sworn testimony that Trump tried to limit the investigation to only “future election meddling.”

Rather than answer, Trump lashed out about the photographer’s attempt to take a shot of the letter from Kim, according to a transcript of the interview that Time released Thursday night.

“Well, you can go to prison, instead, because if you use, if you use the photograph you took of the letter that I gave you . . . ” Trump started.

When the Time reporter interjected to continue his line of questioning, Trump went on, “confidentially, I didn’t give it to you to take photographs of it — so don’t play that game with me.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. President. Were you threatening me with prison time?” the reporter asked.

Trump didn’t answer directly, but launched into a rant about Time’s unfavorable coverage of him.

“So go have fun with your story,” Trump said. “Because I’m sure it will be the 28th horrible story I have in Time magazine because I never, I mean, ha. It’s incredible. With all I’ve done and the success I’ve had, the way that Time magazine writes is absolutely incredible.”

Trump, who lashes out at the news media daily, is extra sensitive to Time magazine because he’s long prided himself on being featured on its cover — this interview will mark his 29th cover story.

Trump has been so enamored with his own appearance in the national publication that he had a fake Time cover with his portrait and the headline: “Donald Trump: The ‘Apprentice’ is a television smash!” framed and hung in several of his golf clubs.

On Friday, Trump also weighed in on an email between a New York Times reporter and the FBI’s director of public affairs that was obtained by the conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch. In the 2017 email, the reporter writes that his colleagues had learned in their reporting on the Russia investigation that the FBI was scrutinizing Trump’s son-in-law and adviser, Jared Kushner, for meeting with Russians.

“Just revealed that the Failing and Desperate New York Times was feeding false stories about me, & those associated with me, to the FBI,” Trump tweeted. “This shows the kind of unprecedented hatred I have been putting up with for years with this Crooked newspaper. Is what they have done legal? . . . ”

Judicial Watch claims the email is evidence of “FBI-media collusion.” Emailing an agency spokesman to verify new information gleaned through reporting is standard journalistic practice.

Trump has made the news media a top adversary since his early days as a candidate but only started tweeting about “fake news” and “enemy of the people” after he was elected. He’s used derogatory terms for reporters, calling them “crazed lunatics” and “the opposition party.”

This isn’t the first time Trump has suggested jailing journalists. Former FBI director James B. Comey recalled in a conversation with the president regarding leaks in the media that Trump said that one solution would be to have reporters “spend a couple days in jail, make a new friend and they are ready to talk.”

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Trump, questioned on child separation policy, insists, ‘I brought the families together’"

Spoiler

In what was billed as his first television interview with a Spanish-language network, President Trump was pressed on his administration’s “zero tolerance” immigration policy and insisted that it was “not a mistake,” doubling down on his previously discredited claims that former president Barack Obama was to blame for families being separated at the border.

“I brought the families together,” Trump said in a wide-ranging and at times contentious interview with Telemundo that aired late Thursday night. “I’m the one that put them together.”

The president’s comments come just days after he tweeted that U.S. immigration agents will soon “begin the process of removing the millions of illegal aliens who have illicitly found their way into the United States.” Trump added, “They will be removed as fast as they come in.”

The plan Trump was apparently referring to earlier in the week would target thousands of migrant parents and children nationwide, and Homeland Security officials have expressed concerns that families could inadvertently become separated as a result, The Washington Post’s Nick Miroff and Maria Sacchetti reported.

Addressing a predominantly Hispanic audience on Thursday, Trump pushed back against “Noticiero Telemundo” anchor José Díaz-Balart’s assertion that he has been “very tough on immigrants.” The roughly 20-minute interview was posted to YouTube in English and was dubbed in Spanish on the television network.

“When you say that, you mean illegal immigrants,” Trump said. “I’ve been very good to immigrants.”

Díaz-Balart questioned Trump about his administration’s deeply unpopular family separation policy, which sparked a humanitarian and political crisis at the border last spring after thousands of parents were split up from their children. Facing broad backlash, Trump abruptly halted the separations in June 2018. The government identified more than 2,700 children that were separated from their families last year, but the actual number, estimated to be thousands more, is still unknown.

“So, the ‘zero tolerance’ policy, was it a mistake?” Díaz-Balart asked, moments after Trump boasted that his support among Latino voters is rising because “Hispanics want toughness at the border.”

“It’s not a mistake,” he replied. “We want to have strong borders.”

Ignoring Díaz-Balart’s attempts to bring up the thousands of children affected by the policy, Trump reverted to a common response when faced with questions about the separations: Falsely pinning the blame on Obama.

“When I became president, President Obama had a separation policy, I didn’t have it,” Trump said. “President Obama is the one that built those prison cells.”

Trump’s assertions about Obama’s immigration policies have been debunked several times by The Post’s Fact Checker. Current and former DHS officials said family separation was rare during the Obama years, and usually only happened if a child’s safety was at risk, The Post reported in April.

As Díaz-Balart continued to press Trump on the “zero tolerance” policy, the president defended himself by reiterating that he was the one responsible for reuniting families. (The reunification process began last year after U.S. District Judge Dana M. Sabraw issued a court order demanding children be returned to their families.)

“I inherited separation and I changed the plan and I brought people together,” Trump said, arguing that family separations were a deterrent to migrants trying to cross the border.

“But I hated to have the separation policy,” he said, prompting Díaz-Balart to ask the president again if “zero tolerance” was a mistake.

“What ‘zero tolerance’ means to me is we’re going to be tough on the border,” Trump said.

“That includes separating parents from children if that’s what it takes?” Díaz-Balart replied.

“No, no, no. I put them together,” Trump answered. “Just remember that, I put them together.”

The president also faced questions about revoking the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which protected undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children, and his recently signed deal with Mexico. The country agreed to take “strong measures” to crack down on the surge of Central American migrants at the southern border to avoid harsh tariffs.

“This week, I consider them a friend,” Trump said of Mexico. “They’ve been doing a great job actually.”

He later added: “If they weren’t great, I would put tariffs on them.”

Díaz-Balart and Trump also discussed how he anticipated faring with Latino voters in the upcoming election and his fellow 2020 candidates.

Trump told Díaz-Balart that he believes he’ll do “much better” with the Latino vote in 2020, specifically drawing attention to his stance on Cuba and Venezuela. The Trump administration has accused Cuba of being involved with keeping Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in power, and is continuing to impose strict regulations on the Caribbean country.

“I’ve been very, very tough on Cuba,” Trump said. “We’re going to get Cuba worked out properly. Not the way Obama did it, which was a disaster.”

Pushed on why Maduro remains in power, Trump said, “Some people say we’ve been too tough, I say we haven’t been tough enough.” The Post’s Karen DeYoung and Josh Dawsey reported Wednesday that Trump “is losing both patience and interest in Venezuela.”

“Well, it’s a process,” Trump said during Thursday’s interview, before expressing sympathy for Venezuelans who are starving and “have no nothing.”

“I love the Venezuelan people,” he said.

[With Maduro entrenched in Venezuela, Trump loses patience and interest in issue, officials say]

Though Trump said he wouldn’t “bother too much” with commenting on his political opponents, he still hurled a few zingers. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) “looks like a tired crazy right now,” he said. Trump also described former vice president Joe Biden as “exhausted.”

When Díaz-Balart brought up a recent Quinnipiac University poll, which had Biden, Sanders, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg, among other candidates, leading Trump in Florida, the president dismissed the results.

“I don’t respect that poll,” he said.

Asked whether he had any regrets, Trump shook his head and said, “I’ve done a great job.”

And his two biggest mistakes as president?

“I would have not appointed a couple of people, and my life would have been a much simpler life,” he said, without specifying which people he was referring to. “My biggest mistakes was I put a couple of people in that I shouldn’t have put in.”

 

[Smash!]

To put things into perspective:

[AmazonGrace]

I mean, everyone knows by now that Trump is a sexual pervert and no one can do a damn thing about it. Somebody could have a video and McConnell would shrug.

[fraurosena]

Be afraid. Be very, very afraid.

 

[AmazonGrace]

He is mentally ill 

 

[Smash!]

Be afraid. Be very, very afraid.
 

So he‘s planning on building a dynasty? There‘s a joke I‘ve heard (or read here?) that there will be a first female president soon. Her name will be Ivanka Trump.
Doesn‘t sound so much like a joke to me.

[Ozlsn]

"“They asked the bartender to leave so they could speak confidentially, and the Secret Service did not allow the bartender to enter the room again,” the club’s catering director wrote. “The group served themselves.”"

The bartender should have locked the alcohol away. 

[Ozlsn]

On 6/21/2019 at 11:53 PM, Smash! said:

Another thought on Iran: Another reason to start war with Iran is that new refugee crisis in Europe will strengthen the populists and move Europe even further to the right. Which is in the spirit of the right-wing hardliners in the USA and Putin

Basically. Putin wants the EU to split, moving it further to the right politically aligns with that. At the very least having the former Eastern Bloc countries turn to Russia rather than Western Europe would be great for him. 

I really hope Eurovision keeps going, because it is seriously one of the weirdest forms of communication still going which countries on both sides of the former Iron Curtain are still engaging in (and the voting patterns give an interesting idea of what's going on politically in regions I don't read much about.)

[GreyhoundFan]

K-Con's husband wrote the following op-ed about the latest woman to accuse the toxic orange megacolon of sexual assault. He calls out the hypocrisy of the repugs. Trigger warning: rape is described. "Republicans believed Juanita Broaddrick. The new rape allegation against Trump is more credible."

Spoiler

George T. Conway III is a lawyer in New York.

“Thank you very much for coming. These four very courageous women have asked to be here and it was our honor to help them. And I think they’re each going to make just an individual, short statement. And then will do a little meeting, and we will see you at the debate.”

With those words, candidate Donald Trump kicked off a news conference just hours before the second presidential debate on Oct. 9, 2016. The brainchild of Stephen K. Bannon, Trump’s campaign chief, the gathering was an effort to blunt the impact of the now-notorious “Access Hollywood” tape, unearthed two days before, on which Trump had boasted of grabbing women by their genitals and doing “anything” to them that he liked.

Sitting with Trump were four women, three of whom claimed to have been subjected to Bill Clinton’s unwelcome sexual advances. One, in particular, was sitting just to Trump’s right.

Her name was Juanita Broaddrick. And she made an accusation of criminal sexual assault.

“Mr. Trump may have said some bad words,” she said, “but Bill Clinton raped me.”

The next night, at a campaign rally in Ambridge, Pa., Trump quoted Broaddrick as saying “Hillary Clinton threatened me after Bill Clinton raped me,” and called Bill Clinton “a predator,” “the worst abuser of women ever to sit in the Oval Office.”

Broaddrick had told her story nearly two decades earlier, first to the media, and then later in a book. She had recounted how, in 1978, Clinton asked her up to his hotel room. How he allegedly forced himself upon her. How she tried to pull away. How he allegedly bit her lip, then later told her to put ice on it. How she sobbed. How she told some of her friends. How she didn’t tell the police. Clinton denied her accusations.

Republicans and conservatives rallied to her cause then, and they did so once again in 2016. Democrats and liberals, not so much — although in the wake of the #MeToo movement, some have since acknowledged the credibility of Broaddrick’s claim.

But today there’s another woman with a similar allegation, against a different powerful man. Her name is E. Jean Carroll.

She, too, says that she was raped — by Donald Trump.

She, too, tells a story about how she was alone with a man. How in 1995 or 1996 that man, Trump, allegedly forced himself upon her. How she tried to fight back. How she tried to push him away and tried to stomp on his foot. How he penetrated her. How she ran out the door. How she told friends. How she didn’t tell the police. Trump also denied the accusations, calling them “fake news” and adding, “She is trying to sell a new book — that should indicate her motivation. It should be sold in the fiction section.”

But Trump called Broaddrick “courageous,” and if Broaddrick was courageous, then certainly Carroll is as well. For Carroll’s story is at least as compelling as Broaddrick’s — if not more so.

And that is because Carroll’s claim, for a number of reasons, actually rests upon a significantly stronger foundation than Broaddrick’s.

For one thing, before she went public with her story, Broaddrick had repeatedly denied that Clinton had assaulted her, even under oath: In an affidavit she had submitted in Paula Jones’s sexual harassment case against Clinton, Broaddrick had sworn that the allegations “that Mr. Clinton had made unwelcome sexual advances toward me in the late seventies … are untrue,” that the press had previously sought “corroboration of these tales,” but that she had “repeatedly denied the allegations.” (Disclosure: I provided behind-the-scenes pro bono legal assistance to Jones’s lawyers.)

For another, Carroll’s account is supported by the sheer number of claims that have now surfaced against Trump — claims in which women have accused Trump of engaging in unwelcome or forcible sexual conduct or assault against them. These claims — all denied by the president — far outnumber the publicized sexual misconduct incidents that involved Clinton, which mostly concerned rumors or allegations of consensual affairs.

And as if to bring things full circle, Carroll’s account is also of course supported by Trump’s depraved remarks on the “Access Hollywood” video, of which there was simply no equivalent in Broaddrick’s case. Whatever else he may have done, Clinton never made a video like that. What Trump described on the video is exactly what Carroll says he did to her.

Finally, no controversy involving Trump would be complete without at least one utterly brazen, easily disprovable Trumpian lie. In his statement denying the rape allegation, he added the claim that “I’ve never met this person in my life.”

If Trump had even bothered to glance at Carroll’s published account, he would have seen a photograph of himself and his then-wife, Ivana, from 1987 ― in which he was amiably chatting with Carroll and her then-husband. By making the absurd and mendacious assertion that he never even met Carroll, Trump utterly annihilates the credibility of his claim that he didn’t assault her.

Republicans or conservatives who promoted Broaddrick’s charges would be hypocritical if they fail to champion Carroll and condemn Trump.

 

[Ozlsn]

"Republicans or conservatives who promoted Broaddrick’s charges would be hypocritical if they fail to champion Carroll and condemn Trump."

And yet I somehow doubt that accurately describing them as hypocrites is going to be enough to actually get them to do anything other than ignore them.

[AmericanRose]

So I'm reading "The Red and the Blue: The 1990s and the Birth of Political Tribalism" and I came across this:

"When we take America back, we are going to make America great again, because there is nothing wrong with putting America first."

That sounds so familiar... and yet it wasn't said by Trump!

[GreyhoundFan]

This is from the morning WaPo round-up. It's an interesting read: "The Daily 202: Trump’s biggest mistake? Personnel, he says."

Spoiler

THE BIG IDEA: President Trump, who declared “I alone can fix it” when he accepted the Republican nomination in 2016, has long believed that his personal instincts mattered more than his personnel choices.

Near the end of his first year in office, Fox News host Laura Ingraham expressed concern about all the senior positions Trump had not filled across the government. She asked whether the president worried that he had enough loyalists to push his vision through. “Let me tell you, the one that matters is me,” he replied. “I’m the only one that matters, because when it comes to it, that’s what the policy is going to be.”

Trump has learned the hard way during the intervening 19 months that personnel is policy, and he cannot make every decision at every department. “If you could have one do-over as president,” Chuck Todd asked during an interview for NBC’s “Meet the Press” that aired Sunday, “what would it be?” Without missing a beat, the president replied: “It would be personnel.”

Asked to elaborate, he mentioned Jeff Sessions. “I would say if I had one do-over, it would be: I would not have appointed Jeff Sessions to be attorney general,” Trump said. “Yeah, that was the biggest mistake.”

Not Helsinki. Not Charlottesville. Not family separations.

Not failing to drain the swamp, end the endless wars or repeal Obamacare.

Not triggering the longest government shutdown in U.S. history in a futile attempt to get funding for a border wall – or subsequently declaring a national emergency to divert money from the military.

Not his quest to expel transgender service members who are willing to die in combat, his mockery of the #MeToo movement nor his demonization of African American athletes.

Not throwing paper towels at Puerto Ricans – nor trying to minimize how much federal funding these U.S. citizens get to rebuild their devastated island.

Not firing James Comey as FBI director – or the other nine cases of possible obstruction of justice outlined in Bob Mueller’s report.

Trump believes appointing Sessions, the first senator to endorse him in 2016, was his biggest mistake. Never mind that Sessions dutifully implemented Trump’s policy priorities right up until he got fired after the midterms. The former Alabama senator’s cardinal sin in Trump’s eyes was recusing himself from the Russia investigation.

The president went on to praise Bill Barr, his pick to replace Sessions. “The job he’s done is incredible,” Trump said. “He’s brought sanity back. … I think he feels that what’s happened in this country was a very bad thing and very bad for our country.”

To be sure, it’s not news that Trump thinks hiring Sessions was a mistake. He’s made that crystal clear. Still, Trump is not a man inclined to admit fault or publicly second guess himself. So it is notable when he does. And his willingness to reflect on his appointments like a baseball team manager talks about his roster reflects a growing recognition of how much of an impact the people he surrounds himself can have on policy outcomes.

Later in the interview, for example, Trump criticized Jerome Powell, his pick for Federal Reserve chair, and critiqued monetary policy. “I'm not happy with his actions,” the president said. “No, I don't think he's done a good job.”

But he defended his national security adviser, saying he likes to hear a mix of perspectives from his inner circle. “Yeah, John Bolton is absolutely a hawk,” Trump said. “If it was up to him, he'd take on the whole world at one time, okay? But that doesn't matter because I want both sides.”

No one has ever fully grasped the burdens of the presidency until they got the job, even the sons of former presidents. There’s a Herculean learning curve for any occupant of the Oval Office. But many have been more prepared for the challenges they would face than Trump, the first president in U.S. history with no prior governing or military experience. They got some sense while leading states, or Senate offices, of how to effectively pull the levers of power in the federal government.

-- Trump promised he would hire only “the best people” to work in his administration, but he’s given critics ample cause to question that claim throughout the past two-and-a-half years. When Patrick Shanahan withdrew last week from consideration to be secretary of defense in the face of reports about domestic violence incidents within his family, it raised questions that still have not been answered about why those episodes never came up when he was confirmed to be the No. 2 person at the Pentagon.

This administration has suffered historic turnover, from the senior ranks of the White House to the Cabinet. And there’s lots of people like Ronny Jackson, Andy Puzder and Stephen Moore who never got the jobs Trump wanted to put them up for.

-- Axios obtained nearly 100 internal Trump transition vetting documents. Prepared by researchers at the Republican National Committee after Chris Christie was fired as the head of the transition team immediately after the election, these documents identify a host of “red flags” about officials who went on to get top jobs in the government. Here are some of the most striking nuggets from the leaked documents, per Jonathan Swan, Juliet Bartz, Alayna Treene and Orion Rummler:

“Seema Verma, who Trump appointed as the Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, had this paragraph near the top of her vetting form: ‘Verma was simultaneously advising Indiana ($3.5 million in contracts) on issues impacting how it would spend Medicaid funds while she was also being paid by a client that received Medicaid funds. Ethics experts have called the arrangement a conflict of interest that potentially put Indiana taxpayers at risk.’

“Sonny Perdue, Trump's pick for Agriculture Secretary, had a vetting form with sections labeled ‘Business conflicts of interest’ and ‘Family conflicts of interest.’ It noted that ‘Perdue is the owner of Houston Fertilizer and Grain, a company that has received contracts from the Department of Agriculture.’ … One heading in the document about Kris Kobach, in the running for Homeland Security Secretary, listed ‘white supremacy’ as a vulnerability. It cited accusations from past political opponents that he had ties to white supremacist groups. …

“Scott Pruitt, who ultimately lost his job as EPA Administrator because of serial ethical abuses and clubbiness with lobbyists, had a section in his vetting form titled ‘allegations of coziness with big energy companies.’ Tom Price, who ultimately resigned as Health and Human Services Secretary after Trump lost confidence in him in part for stories about his use of chartered flights, had sections in his dossier flagging ‘criticisms of management ability’ and ‘Dysfunction And Division Has Haunted Price's Leadership Of The House Budget Committee.’ Mick Mulvaney, who became Trump's Budget Director and is now his acting chief of staff, has a striking assortment of ‘red flags,’ including his assessment that Trump ‘is not a very good person.’

“Traditionally, any would-be top official faces three types of vetting: an FBI background check, a scrub for financial conflicts of interest from the Office of Government Ethics, and a deep dive from the president-elect's political team, which veteran Washington lawyers often handle,” Axios notes. “According to sources on the RNC vetting team, senior Trump officials asked them to do an initial ‘scrub’ of the public record before Trump met the contenders. But in many cases — for example the misguided choice of Puzder as Labor Secretary — this RNC ‘scrub’ of public sources was the only substantial vetting in Trump's possession when he announced his picks.”

I included the hyperlink to the Axios article. It's also a good read.

[AmericanRose]

Continuing to read... very interesting that Republicans weren't satisfied by the initial investigation of Whitewater (I was a kid in the 90s, so all this is new to me), and so Congress decided to revive an old independent counsel statute.

"It was a law that had it's roots in Watergate. When it came to some politically sensitive investigations, the thinking went, a mere special counsel just wasn't independent enough. After all, special counsels - like Fiske - were directly appointed by the attorney general, who in turn was appointed by the president, and officially, special counsels worked under the Justice Department. An independent counsel law built in more separation. For major investigations that reached into the executive branch, a panel of three federal judges would be empowered to choose a prosecutor, and that prosecutor would enjoy free rein - no deadline, limitless budget, unfireable by the president."

Why didn't we do that?? Republicans were in the minority when that came up, and yet they got it passed... of course, Democrats were concerned about what it would look like if they tried to block it, and Republicans these days don't seem to care how guilty such things make them look.

[apple1]

On ‎6‎/‎21‎/‎2019 at 10:43 PM, AmazonGrace said:

I mean, everyone knows by now that Trump is a sexual pervert and no one can do a damn thing about it. Somebody could have a video and McConnell would shrug.

Quoting this post because: This has barely been a tiny blip in news. He raped Ms. Carroll - responds only with "She's not my type" and "I didn't" - but she's, depending on who is counting how - somewhere between number 16 and number 22 - and her account is almost the same as his own words on the Access Hollywood tape - and none of us (citizens of the US) feel that we can do anything.

[apple1]

Quote

 

Want to see how Rupert Murdoch's media empire is at work for President Trump? Look around — you can't miss it. In the past week:

-- The New York Post published and then mysteriously deleted a story about Trump accuser E. Jean Carroll.

-- Fox News Channel's newscasts and talk shows have barely mentioned Carroll's newly published allegation that Trump sexually assaulted her in the 1990s. Trump says she is lying.

-- Archived text messages revealed that Sean Hannity texted Paul Manafort like he was a PR agent.

-- The Washington Post came out with new reporting about Jeanine Pirro using her Fox perch to trash Jeff Sessions after he blocked her from a job at the Justice Department.

Read More

-- Trump called into Sean Hannity's show for a 50-minute-long chat.

-- He tweeted out videos from Hannity's show, Pirro's show, and Lou Dobbs' show.

-- And Fox announced that Tucker Carlson will have an exclusive sit-down with Trump at the G20 this weekend.

Yes, Murdoch's Wall Street Journal does fantastic reporting. Yes, Murdoch's other outlets employ excellent journalists too. But these seven examples show how the Murdoch-Trump back-scratching never stops. Much of it happens in public, but some happens in private, and is only uncovered through dogged reporting...

 

https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/25/media/rupert-murdoch-president-trump-alliance/index.html

[GreyhoundFan]

1 hour ago, apple1 said:

Quoting this post because: This has barely been a tiny blip in news. He raped Ms. Carroll - responds only with "She's not my type" and "I didn't" - but she's, depending on who is counting how - somewhere between number 16 and number 22 - and her account is almost the same as his own words on the Access Hollywood tape - and none of us (citizens of the US) feel that we can do anything.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Trump heroically saves us from himself"

Spoiler

Let us praise President Trump for saving us from himself.

As public outcry swelled, Trump announced over the weekend that he would postpone immigration raids and mass deportations, reversing a reckless plan devised a week earlier by a thoughtless fellow by the name of — let’s see here — Donald J. Trump.

Last week, Trump declared that 10 minutes before a planned strike on Iran, “I stopped it” because it was “not proportionate” to Tehran’s downing of an unmanned U.S. drone. Thus did the coolheaded Trump overrule a rash escalation ordered previously by a warmonger named — I’ve got it here somewhere — Donald J. Trump. “We were cocked & loaded to retaliate last night on 3 different sights” he said (presumably meaning “locked” not “cocked,” and “sites” not “sights”).

Before that, Trump announced that he had “indefinitely suspended” tariffs on all Mexican goods, which had terrified U.S. businesses and Trump’s fellow Republicans. Thus did he rescue America from a ruinous trade war cooked up a couple of weeks earlier by that villainous protectionist, Donald J. Trump.

That Trump is, in each case, essentially countermanding himself apparently caused some cognitive dissonance in the Trumpian brain, for on Saturday he tweeted out a defense of his decision not to attack Iran: “I never called the strike against Iran ‘BACK,’ as people are incorrectly reporting, I just stopped it from going forward at this time!” A crucial distinction, no doubt.

He has even turned against his own advisers, as though they were the ones giving the orders, over his objections. “These people want to push us into a war, and it’s so disgusting,” Trump told the Wall Street Journal, referring to “advisers in his inner circle,” the paper reported.

And what kind of idiot hired “these people”? Oh, wait.

Personnel is another area in which Trump finds himself attempting to solve problems he created. It seems he picked Cabinet-level appointees as casually as he ordered up a strike on Iran. Axios published Sunday a voluminous leak of vetting reports of Trump administration officials, compiled by the Republican National Committee, that were generally provided to Trump before he interviewed candidates. In these reports, we see that many of Trump’s appointees were predisposed toward the kind of unethical behavior that would recur during the Trump administration.

It is often said that the Trump administration failed to vet candidates adequately, and in some cases that appears to be true. But the Axios documents suggest that the vetting itself, in many cases, wasn’t the problem. It’s that Trump ignored the warnings, repeatedly tapping people who were flagged for having business conflicts of interest, dubious ethical records and other behaviors endemic to the Washington swamp. Owned a bank accused of “racist lending practices”? Did business with the agency he would oversee? Accused of ties to white supremacists? Called Hillary Clinton the anti-Christ? No problem! (But David Petraeus, flagged for being “opposed to torture,” didn’t get tapped.)

Trump was warned (or would have been warned if he read the vetting documents) that:

Former interior secretary Ryan Zinke “was accused at least twice of misusing taxpayer funds for personal travel”; former Environmental Protection Agency administrator Scott Pruitt appeared to be improperly cozy with energy interests; former health and human services secretary Tom Price had been accused of improperly blending campaign contributions and his legislative record; Kris Kobach, tapped to run Trump’s voting-fraud commission, was criticized for his alleged ties to white-supremacist groups and racially inflammatory rhetoric; businesses owned by Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross included an investment company fined for misleading investors and a coal mine that had hundreds of safety violations and a deadly explosion; Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin was seen as “looking to make profits from the ruins of the housing bust”; Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao had potential conflicts of interest because of her “large network of business associations”; and Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani’s “foreign entanglements” (even a paid speech to a group that had been listed as a “foreign terrorist organization”) were detailed at great length. And there were several others.

Trump evidently ignored the warnings. Since then, he has had to part with Zinke, Pruitt, Price and Kobach, while headlines about Ross, Mnuchin, Chao and Giuliani have caused headaches for the White House.

Not surprisingly, Axios reports that Trump has withdrawn one nominee for every 11 confirmations and has withdrawn twice as many as President Barack Obama had by this point. Several more, such as defense secretary pick Patrick Shanahan, were withdrawn before they were formally nominated. Turnover on the job, similarly, has been historically high, as Trump now attempts to dissociate himself from appointees who probably wouldn’t have been there in the first place if Trump had paid attention to the vetting reports.

It’s another case of saving the world from himself. Failure, you might say, was cocked and loaded.

You know how he would truly save us from himself? By traveling to the deserted island we've frequently talked about here and staying there for the rest of his life.

[Dandruff]

This reminds me of a toddler threatening to hold his/her breath.  I don't wonder why.

[GreyhoundFan]

"This is the reality of Trump’s America"

Spoiler

President Trump’s immigration policy has crossed the line from gratuitous cruelty to flat-out sadism. Perhaps he enjoys seeing innocent children warehoused in filth and squalor. Perhaps he thinks that’s what America is all about. Is he right, Trump supporters? Is he right, Republicans in Congress? Is this what you want?

A team of lawyers, tasked with monitoring the administration’s compliance with a consent decree on the treatment of migrant children, managed to gain access to a Customs and Border Protection detention center in Clint, Tex., last week. The lawyers were not allowed to tour the facility but were able to interview more than 50 of the estimated 350 children being held there.

Let me quote at length how Willamette University law professor W. Warren Binford described those interviews to a reporter for the New Yorker:

“They [the children] were filthy dirty, there was mucus on their shirts. . . . There was food on the shirts, and the pants as well. They told us that they were hungry. They told us that some of them had not showered or had not showered until the day or two days before we arrived. Many of them described that they only brushed their teeth once. This facility knew last week that we were coming. The government knew three weeks ago that we were coming.

“So, in any event, the children told us that nobody’s taking care of them, so that basically the older children are trying to take care of the younger children. The guards are asking the younger children or the older children, ‘Who wants to take care of this little boy? Who wants to take [care] of this little girl?’ and they’ll bring in a two-year-old, a three-year-old, a four-year-old. And then the littlest kids are expected to be taken care of by the older kids, but then some of the oldest children lose interest in it, and little children get handed off to other children. And sometimes we hear about the littlest children being alone by themselves on the floor.

“Many of the children reported sleeping on the concrete floor. They are being given army blankets, those wool-type blankets that are really harsh. Most of the children said they’re being given two blankets, one to put beneath them on the floor. Some of the children are describing just being given one blanket and having to decide whether to put it under them or over them because there is air-conditioning at this facility. And so they’re having to make a choice about, Do I try to protect myself from the cement, or do I try to keep warm?”

Binford told reporters that the older children described outbreaks of influenza and head lice at the overcrowded facility, which she said was designed to hold no more than 104 detainees. She told The Post that she “witnessed a 14-year-old caring for a 2-year-old without a diaper, shrugging as the baby urinated as they sat at a table because she did not know what to do.”

The legal experts monitoring the treatment of migrant children rarely go public with their findings, but Binford was shaken by what she saw and heard. She said the overwhelmed CBP guards at the Clint facility were sympathetic to her efforts and knew the children should not be warehoused in such conditions. Thankfully, according to news reports Monday night, hundreds of the children were removed from the facility.

According to the consent decree Binford is helping to monitor, they should not be warehoused at all. Most should have quickly been released to a parent, relative or guardian who is already in the United States.

Shamefully, there is more: Dolly Lucio Sevier, a physician who was able to assess 39 children at a different detention facility in McAllen, Tex., described conditions there as including “extreme cold temperatures, lights on 24 hours a day, no adequate access to medical care, basic sanitation, water, or adequate food,” according to a document obtained by ABC News.

“The conditions within which they are held could be compared to torture facilities,” Lucio Sevier wrote.

Trump and Vice President Pence responded with lies (blaming the Obama administration), deflection (blaming Democrats in Congress) and lots of oleaginous faux concern. But this is a humanitarian crisis of Trump’s making. A president who panders to his base by seizing billions of dollars from other programs to build a “big, beautiful wall” also panders to his base by cruelly treating brown-skinned migrant children like subhumans.

Do not look away. This is the reality of Trump’s America. Deal with it.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

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