American Politics Thread: Orange is the new POTUS

[RougeUnderoos]

Sessions is on now talking about those darn drug dealers and the new plan to crush the drug trade with harsher prison sentences. A proven strategy if ever there was one.

He didn't take any questions though. He needs to get home to watch Donahue.

[photon]

A good read on how an apparently highly respected guy can sell out his career to Trump for no good reason.

“He made—he made a recommendation,” Donald Trump said yesterday of his Deputy Attorney General, Rod Rosenstein in an interview with NBC News. “He’s highly respected, very good guy, very smart guy. The Democrats like him; the Republicans like him. He made a recommendation, but regardless of the recommendation, I was going to fire Comey.”

There it is, directly from the presidential mouth: Trump happily traded the reputation of Rosenstein, who began the week as a well-respected career prosecutor, for barely 24 hours of laughably transparent talking points in the news cycle. The White House sent out person after person—including the Vice President—to insist that Rosenstein’s memo constituted the basis for the President’s action against the FBI director. The White House described a bottoms-up dissatisfaction with Comey’s leadership, which Rosenstein’s memo encapsulated and to which the President acceded. And then, just as casually as Trump and his people set Rosenstein up as the bad guy for what was obviously a presidential decision into whose service Rosenstein had been enlisted, Trump revealed that Rosenstein was, after all, nothing more than a set piece.

https://www.lawfareblog.com/et-tu-ro...al-must-resign

[photon]

Lol, people tweeting about seeing Melissa McCarthy as Sean Spicer driving around on the famous Spicey podium.

http://mashable.com/2017/05/12/melis...ugh-manhattan/

[Thor]

Originally Posted by New Era

Well, Donald Trump's lawyers said so, so it must be true. Come on photon, you're smarter than that. We also know this is bull####.

http://www.seattletimes.com/nation-w...beach-mansion/

http://www.reuters.com/investigates/...rump-property/

I think when it all comes out, we will see shell corps and indirect ties, which are effectively tied to Trumps companies, and these lawyers can say that directly he does not have ties which makes sense.

[photon]

This is great.

[troutman]

Donald Trump’s Legal Team Won a ‘Russia Law Firm of The Year’ Award

http://fortune.com/2017/01/11/donald...-russia-award/


Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, the law firm advising President-elect Donald Trump on handling his business conflicts, won the Russia Law Firm of the Year award in 2016.

[Lanny_McDonald]

It's like Trump isn't even trying anymore. He's rubbing it in the faces of people with these connections.

[aaronck]

Originally Posted by RougeUnderoos

Sessions is on now talking about those darn drug dealers and the new plan to crush the drug trade with harsher prison sentences. A proven strategy if ever there was one.

He didn't take any questions though. He needs to get home to watch Donahue.

Street level busts never work! Isn't there an old white man version of the Wire they can watch?

[ernie]

Originally Posted by RougeUnderoos

Sessions is on now talking about those darn drug dealers and the new plan to crush the drug trade with harsher prison sentences. A proven strategy if ever there was one.

He didn't take any questions though. He needs to get home to watch Donahue.

You have to admire the GOP for their consistency.

No matter what the topic you can be guaranteed they will completely ignore the science and consensus of experts.

[DuffMan]

Originally Posted by RougeUnderoos

Sessions is on now talking about those darn drug dealers and the new plan to crush the drug trade with harsher prison sentences. A proven strategy if ever there was one.

Don't forget, the prison system is for profit in the US. Sessions just made some prison stockholders richer, while feeding his racist urges, at the same time.

[Lanny_McDonald]

Originally Posted by DuffMan

Don't forget, some of the prison system is for profit in the US. Sessions just made some prison stockholders richer, while feeding his racist urges, at the same time.

Fixed for accuracy.

[FlameOn]

The Economist explains why Trump's economic policies are a long term economic disaster waiting to happen and how they fly in the face of economic pragmatism.

Trumponomics is a poor recipe for long-term prosperity. America will end up more indebted and more unequal. It will neglect the real issues, such as how to retrain hardworking people whose skills are becoming redundant. Worse, when the contradictions become apparent, Mr Trump’s economic nationalism may become fiercer, leading to backlashes in other countries—further stoking anger in America. Even if it produces a short-lived burst of growth, Trumponomics offers no lasting remedy for America’s economic ills. It may yet pave the way for something worse.

https://www.economist.com/news/leade...nomy-well-rule

[direwolf]

Lol, Trump has cancelled a planned visit to FBI headquarters.

http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/poli...person-n757771

The White House has abandoned the idea of President Trump visiting FBI headquarters after being told he would not be greeted warmly, administration officials told NBC News.

Amid the continuing fallout over his decision to fire FBI Director James Comey, Trump was considering an appearance at the FBI's J Edgar Hoover Building in downtown Washington, DC. The White House publicly floated the idea as recently as Thursday morning.

Spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders, asked by a reporter whether such a visit was imminent, replied, I believe that it's very likely that takes place sometime in the next few days."

But that idea was dropped later Thursday, administration officials said, after the FBI told the White House the optics would not be good. FBI officials made clear that the president would not draw many smiles and cheers, having just unceremoniously sacked a very popular director.

[afc wimbledon]

Originally Posted by photon

Kind of what I'd expected, I doubted there'd be this huge smoking gun in his tax returns.

President Donald Trump’s lawyers say a review of his last 10 years of tax returns do not reflect “any income of any type from Russian sources,” with some exceptions.

The lawyers did not release copies of Trump’s tax returns so The Associated Press cannot independently verify their conclusions.

The letter says there is no equity investment by Russians in entities controlled by Trump or debt owed by Trump to Russian lenders. It does reflect income from the 2013 Miss Universe pageant held in Moscow and a property sold to a Russian billionaire in 2008 for $95 million.

The White House says Trump asked his lawyers for a letter following a request from Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who heads one of the congressional committees investigating Russia’s interference in last year’s election.

https://apnews.com/be034d91876e42af97f7fa4e0b39e4f1

You of course realise that Putin funnels all that crap through deutsche bank, the lawyers would be, for a massive fee, happy to look at the unexplained billions coming through there or Cyprus or the Grand Bahamas and sign off on 'its not from Russia' when it patently is.

[Izzle]

The lack of co-ordination only makes it better.

[octothorp]

Originally Posted by afc wimbledon

You of course realise that Putin funnels all that crap through deutsche bank, the lawyers would be, for a massive fee, happy to look at the unexplained billions coming through there or Cyprus or the Grand Bahamas and sign off on 'its not from Russia' when it patently is.

As well, the letter admits that anything like condo-sales would not be covered by the scope of this review. And we already know that Trump has received a huge but unspecified amount of income from Russia through those channels.

http://www.reuters.com/investigates/...rump-property/

That is, potentially, one of the major ways that Putin and his Russian oligarch network have bought influence over Trump. Incidentally, this letter predates the Reuters expose I linked here, so maybe that's part of the reason it was never released until now: it quickly became obsolete in light of the connections highlighted in that expose. But now Trump's looking for anything to put out fires so why not just toss it out there?

[ClubFlames]

Don't know if this is new or old but..

www.hail-hydra.com

[calumniate]

Hot take on what 'american' fascism is about:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/12/o...ol-left-region

[DuffMan]

Originally Posted by New Era

Fixed for accuracy.

Was thinking about it, and came across this. More trump swamp building.

JANUARY 5, 2017

Trump and Sessions
Donald Trump’s victory has been nothing but good news for the private prison industry.

The day after the election, shares of the two biggest private prison corporations — Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and GEO Group — jumped 43 and 21 percent, respectively.

In October, according to Politico, GEO Group hired Sen. Sessions’ former aides David Stewart and Ryan Robichaux to lobby in favor of outsourcing federal corrections to private companies. GEO Group is the same private prison company that was accused of illegally donating to a Rebuild America Now, a pro-Donald Trump super PAC, earlier this year.

https://www.aclu.org/blog/speak-free...e-civil-rights

[DuffMan]

Spiceys back