American Politics Thread: Orange is the new POTUS

[direwolf]

Just breaking now.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world...=.cf304ae1a011

The nation’s top intelligence official told associates in March that President Trump asked him if he could intervene with then-FBI Director James B. Comey to get the bureau to back off its focus on former national security adviser Michael Flynn in its Russia probe, according to officials.

On March 22, less than a week after being confirmed by the Senate, Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats attended a briefing at the White House together with officials from several government agencies. As the briefing was wrapping up, Trump asked everyone to leave the room except for Coats and CIA Director Mike Pompeo.

The president then started complaining about the FBI investigation and Comey’s handling of it, said officials familiar with the account Coats gave to associates. Two days earlier, Comey had confirmed in a congressional hearing that the bureau was probing whether Trump’s campaign coordinated with Russia during the 2016 race.

The events involving Coats show the president went further than just asking intelligence officials to deny publicly the existence of any evidence showing collusion during the 2016 election, as The Washington Post reported in May. The interaction with Coats indicates that Trump aimed to enlist top officials to have Comey curtail the bureau’s probe.

Coats will testify on Wednesday before the Senate Intelligence Committee. Lawmakers on the panel said they would press him for information about his interactions with the president regarding the FBI investigation.

You have to wonder what it's gonna take for Republicans to finally grow a backbone and remove this assclown from office. It's like Anderson Cooper said: Trump could take a dump on their desk and these soulless d-bags would still defend him. Jesus, what a f'n gong show. If Obama had done even one tenth of the crap Trump has pulled so far, he would have been impeached weeks ago.

[GGG]

If the republicans are smart in the Senate here they should really grill Comey and ask the questions that will illicit the worst responses for Trumps behaviour. This way they are seen doing the digging as if they don't the democrats will and the info will come out anyway and it will look like the republicans tried to cover it up.

[MarchHare]

@RealPressSecBot is my new favourite novelty Twitter account. All it does is retweet everything Trump posts but puts his words on official White House letterhead, as in the below example:

[ernie]

Originally Posted by DuffMan

Wonder where Paul Ryan has been lately?

Likely trying to figure out if he is going to get swept into the investigation....

[Street Pharmacist]

Originally Posted by GGG

If the republicans are smart in the Senate here they should really grill Comey and ask the questions that will illicit the worst responses for Trumps behaviour. This way they are seen doing the digging as if they don't the democrats will and the info will come out anyway and it will look like the republicans tried to cover it up.

Rubio and Corker, who will be leading the questioning, were at the White House for dinner tonight. So I doubt that they'll ask any tough questions.

The line has already been put out to damage Comey's credibility. Conway was on Fox News saying she hoped that during questioning he could correct all his false testimony about the Clinton emails (like she was really concerned about poor Hillary).

Expect to hear lots of questions from Republicans about unrelated matters/decisions that cast him in a bad light. You'll also get a bunch of questions on his earlier testimony where he incorrectly stated that Abedin had forwarded "hundreds of thousands of emails" to Weiner's address, when there was only a few. They'll pretend to be outraged on Hillary's behalf.

[Street Pharmacist]

Originally Posted by New Era

The largest base in the region.

Well he did talk glowingly about what a "true and great ally" they were after mentioning the base during a speech last week

[RougeUnderoos]

The hits just keep on coming. Skimming/scamming off the top of a charity for children's cancer research.

http://www.gq.com/story/eric-trump-c...-forbes-report

This latest report, though, somehow sets the bar even higher. (Lower?) Noted workplace sexual harassment expert Eric Trump—that's the Draco Malfoy one, not the American Psycho one—has long touted the millions of dollars his eponymous foundation gives to children's cancer research and treatment, boasting that the charity is so efficient because the Trump Organization generously donates the use of the family properties for the foundation's events. A new report from Forbes, however, alleges that this is a gigantic crock of ####.

In reviewing filings from the Eric Trump Foundation and other charities, it's clear that the course wasn't free—that the Trump Organization received payments for its use, part of more than $1.2 million that has no documented recipients past the Trump Organization. Golf charity experts say the listed expenses defy any reasonable cost justification for a one-day golf tournament.

[Street Pharmacist]

Originally Posted by RougeUnderoos

The hits just keep on coming. Skimming/scamming off the top of a charity for children's cancer research.

http://www.gq.com/story/eric-trump-c...-forbes-report

Photon posted the actual Forbes article this morning. I'm not sure why this isn't a bigger story. Stunning really

[afc wimbledon]

Originally Posted by Street Pharmacist

Photon posted the actual Forbes article this morning. I'm not sure why this isn't a bigger story. Stunning really

well we all knew he was a venal ######bag, its that he's a Russian spy that suprises, especially as he's such a bloody idiot at it

[fanman]

Originally Posted by DuffMan

Wonder where Paul Ryan has been lately?

Probably packing his bags and charting a course to a small unmarked island in the South Pacific, you know, for the time when he and half his colleagues get swept up in the Russian scandal.

[Street Pharmacist]

I mentioned it above, but it really seems like Senators Rubio and Corker have sold their souls. They're the ones that will be probing Comey for answers on whether Trump obstructed Justice.

@Jordanfabian
Trump dinner companions tonite, per pooler @Carrasquillo: Marco Rubio, Tom Cotton, Todd Young, Cory Gardner, Francis Rooney & Lee Zeldin.

As Christopher Hayes said "If your life depended on Rubio having a spine, you'd better say goodbye". So really, they're having a strategy session on how to try and ruin Comey's credibility

[Senator Clay Davis]

Originally Posted by Street Pharmacist

Photon posted the actual Forbes article this morning. I'm not sure why this isn't a bigger story. Stunning really

Because while this is obviously absolutely abhorrent (if totally predictable), this isn't really new, this is more of what was reported last year on the Trump foundation. Donnie and Beavis and Butthead could all be looking at some nice RICO charges in New York State, an investigation they cannot do anything about. Should be more focus on this than Russia since I suspect this has a much higher chance of succeeding in bringing the orange goblin down.

[direwolf]

Thursday is gearing up to be quite entertaining.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...=.f181538b3bfd

Alone in the White House in recent days, President Trump — frustrated and defiant — has been spoiling for a fight, according to his confidants and associates.

Glued even more than usual to the cable news shows that blare from the televisions in his private living quarters, or from the 60-inch flat screen he had installed in his cramped study off the Oval Office, he has fumed about “fake news.” Trump has seethed as his agenda has stalled in Congress and the courts. He has chafed against the pleas for caution from his lawyers and political advisers, tweeting whatever he wants, whenever he wants.

And on Thursday, the president will come screen-to-screen with the FBI director he fired, James B. Comey, thoughts of whom have consumed, haunted and antagonized Trump since Comey launched an expanding Russia investigation that the president slammed as a “witch hunt.”

“He’s infuriated at a deep-gut, personal level that the elite media has tolerated [the Russia story] and praised Comey,” former House speaker Newt Gingrich said. “He’s not going to let some guy like that smear him without punching him as hard as he can.”

This part made me laugh. They need to distract him like they would a toddler.

The president’s lawyers and aides have been urging him to resist engaging, and they hope to keep him busy Thursday with other events meant to compete for his — and the news media’s — attention.

privately, Trump’s advisers said they are bracing for a worst-case scenario: that he ignores their advice and tweets his mind.

Trump’s team is preparing a campaign-style line of attack aimed at undercutting Comey’s reputation. They plan to portray him as a “showboat” and to bring up past controversies from his career, including his handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation in 2016, according to people involved in the planning.

The Republican National Committee has lined up a roster of surrogates to appear on conservative news stations nationwide to defend Trump. But a list the RNC distributed on Tuesday could hardly be described as star-studded: The names include Bob Paduchik, an RNC co-chair who worked on Trump’s Ohio campaign; Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi (R); and Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge (R).

[FlameOn]

Like father, like son. Eric Trump goes on record calling Democratic voters "not even people" for opposing his father's policies.

President Trump’s son Eric Trump on Tuesday said Democrats are “not even people” to him after their obstruction of his father’s agenda.

“I’ve never seen hatred like this,” he said on Fox News’s “Hannity” Tuesday night. “To me, they’re not even people. It’s so, so sad. Morality’s just gone, morals have flown out the window and we deserve so much better than this as a country."

“You see the Democratic Party, they’re imploding. They’re imploding. They became obstructionists because they have no message of their own.”

Trump additionally criticized the Democratic National Committee’s (DNC) leadership without directly naming Chairman Tom Perez.

“You see the head of the DNC, who is a total whack job,” he told host Sean Hannity. “There’s no leadership there.”

“They lost the [2016 presidential] election that they should have won because they spent seven times the amount of money that my father spent.”

http://thehill.com/homenews/administ...ot-even-people

[Itse]

Originally Posted by Street Pharmacist

Photon posted the actual Forbes article this morning. I'm not sure why this isn't a bigger story. Stunning really

Why? Because the Republicans have absolutely no morals.

[DuffMan]

Originally Posted by FlameOn

Like father, like son. Eric Trump goes on record calling Democratic voters "not even people" for opposing his father's policies.

What an idiot, he sounds just as delusional as his dad.

[RougeUnderoos]

Ha ha. Oh Eric.

It’s so, so sad. Morality’s just gone, morals have flown out the window and we deserve so much better than this as a country."

On the same day a story comes out about him robbing a children's cancer charity, he goes on TV to lament someone else's immorality. You couldn't make this stuff up if you tried.

And what's with this guy's weird look? He's only 33 years old for crying out loud, but he dresses himself up and combs his hair to look like a middle-aged undertaker. And a shady one at that.

[FlameOn]

Originally Posted by DuffMan

What an idiot, he sounds just as delusional as his dad.

Eric Trump: "Not even people" = Untermensh

[FlameOn]

Three different FBI officials can corroborate Comey's claims that Trump obstructed the FBI investigation.

One by one this winter, then-FBI Director James B. Comey pulled aside three of the bureau’s top officials for private chats. In calm tones, he told each of them about a private Oval Office meeting with President Trump — during which, Comey alleged, the president pressed him to shut down the federal criminal investigation of Trump’s then-national security adviser, Michael Flynn.

Those three officials, according to two people with detailed, firsthand knowledge of the matter, were Jim Rybicki, Comey’s chief of staff and senior counselor; James Baker, the FBI’s general counsel; and Andrew McCabe, then the bureau’s deputy director, and now the acting director, following Trump’s firing of Comey last month. Comey spoke to them within two days of his Oval conversation with Trump, the sources said, and recounted the president’s comments about the Flynn investigation.

The White House and Trump have categorically denied Comey’s account, which Comey reportedly detailed in his own notes shortly after his encounter with Trump. Thus far, the allegation has played as a he-said, she-said between the president and the director he abruptly removed.

That no longer appears to be the case — it will be Trump’s word versus the word of Comey and at least three other leaders of the FBI.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-polit...ey-trump-flynn

[DuffMan]

Originally Posted by FlameOn

Eric Trump: "Not even people" = Untermensh

subhumans