Category: DonaldTrump

A ‘very concerned’ Collins just rubber-stamped another Trump nominee. Of course

Posted on by Joan McCarter

Back in March, Sen. Susan Collins was concerned about Rep. John Ratcliffe, impeached president Trump's pick to serve as director of national intelligence. That was when the nomination was fairly new, after Ratcliffe had already been considered and rejected as a "chicken-plucking liar" in Mark Sumner's perfect words. Since that time, Ratcliffe proved his fealty to Trump in a completely over-the-top impeachment hearing process/Republican shouting competition.

So of course Trump nominated him officially, no doubt appreciating a fellow fabulist, which gave Collins heartburn. As she loves to remind anyone who will listen, she sponsored the legislation which created the DNI position. Back in March, she fretted "I don’t know Congressman Ratcliffe. As the author of the 2004 law that created the director of national intelligence position, I obviously am very concerned about who the nominee is, the qualifications and the commitment to overseeing the intelligence community in order to provide the best-quality intelligence." So much for that.

Collins voted for him in committee Tuesday, in a closed hearing. Which means Collins didn't have to comment on it again. Go figure.

Let's make sure her time is up. Please give $1 to help Democrats in each of these crucial Senate races, but especially the one in Maine!

Obama’s office slams GOP investigation into Ukraine, Joe Biden, in private letter from March

Posted on by Marissa Higgins

In a letter from March, the office of former president Barack Obama condemned a congressional investigation into former vice president and now presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden. You likely remember the Republicans’ incessant focus on Hunter Biden’s position at Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian natural energy company. Trump and various Republican allies have alleged that there’s a scandal there, and alleged possible conflict of interest for Joe Biden, who was key on Ukraine policy at the time. And of course, Republicans had claimed this investigation had nothing to do with wanting to distract from Trump’s impeachment proceedings or the upcoming general election. 

In the private letter signed by Obama’s records representative and now available because the office released it to BuzzFeed News upon request, Obama’s office described it as an effort to "to shift the blame for Russian interference in the 2016 election to Ukraine” and said it was “without precedent." The letter, which was first obtained and reported on by BuzzFeed News, does not actually explicitly mention Biden by name, and does agree to release the requested presidential records.  

"The request for early release of presidential records in order to give credence to a Russian disinformation campaign--one that has already been thoroughly investigated by a bipartisan congressional committee--is without precedent," the letter, dated March 13 and sent to the National Archives and Records Administration (which maintains presidential records), says in part. 

As a quick review, Republican Sens. Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson made the record request in November 2019. The two senators have effectively spearheaded the investigation into the Bidens and Ukraine, and have been doing so since last fall. Both wanted records on meetings between Ukrainian officials and the Obama administration from the National Archives. 

The letter from Obama’s office refers to former National Security Council analyst and Russia expert Fiona Hill’s now-viral opening testimony about the notion that it was Ukraine, not Russia, that had a misinformation effort in the 2016 election. She said it’s “a fictional narrative that has been perpetrated and propagated by the Russian security services themselves.”

The Obama office relented and has allowed the records to be released "in the interest of countering the misinformation campaign underlying this request.” Former presidents (and technically, current presidents, though it’s no surprise that representatives for Trump wouldn’t do so) are allowed to review and use executive privileges on record requests thanks to a federal mandate. But neither Obama’s office nor Trump’s did so. Obama’s office released the records essentially to counter the message that is beneath the request.

The letter finishes: “We emphasize that abuse of the special access process strikes at the heart of presidential confidentiality interests and undermines the statutory framework and norms that govern access to presidential records.”

At the time of Trump’s impeachment trial in the Senate, Republicans went out of their way to distract from any perceived weakness and create an enemy—in this case, Hunter Biden and Ukraine. But it didn’t end there. For example, Sens. Grassley and Johnson have reportedly recently dug into Secret Service documents to see whether Joe and Hunter Biden ever overlapped on trips to Ukraine. It’s endless. Even now, as a global pandemic rages on and the United States continues to fumble public health crisis management, GOP senators continue to dig into the Burisma theories. 

Soldiers and veterans are dropping dead of COVID-19, and Trump doesn’t care

Posted on by kos

Impeached president Donald Trump is a f’n idiot. He tries so hard to sound inspirational and hopeful and tough, and instead he sounds like a moron. Like here, when he ends up sounding totally psyched and excited that the United States lead the world in coronavirus deaths:

"The whole world is excited watching us," Trump tells reporters. "Because we're leading the world."

— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) May 5, 2020

He wants to sound optimistic, but he’s too stupid to pull it off. No, the world isn’t excited to see the devastation happening in the United States (except maybe Russia), and presumably, neither is Trump. But who knows? The same happens when he tries to frame the pandemic as a battle between a wily mastermind of a virus, and America’s can-do spirit. 

Here is Trump again, yesterday:

Trump says the virus is "a tough enemy, a smart enemy. But nobody's like us and nobody's tough like us. And I said it before and I'll say it again: the people of our country are warriors."

— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) May 5, 2020

The virus isn’t smart. It’s a freakin’ virus. It’s as dumb as a Trump, following base instincts without regards to long-term strategy. And we certainly aren’t going to defeat the virus by being “tough.” The virus doesn’t give a rat’s ass about the grit of the American people. It just does its own thing, on its own timetable, unconcerned by “tough” words from Trump or anyone else.

Literally, the only way to currently thwart this virus is to hide from it. That’s how powerful it is. And the only way to thwart this thing, long-term, is through science. So yeah, smart people doing smart things. Again, no “tough” words from Trump will matter a whit.

If Trump wants to treat this as a war, however, why not treat people as actual uniformed soldiers? Give front-line and essential employees veterans benefits, hazard pay, and medals. Give them free socialized medical care like members of the armed forces. Pay out $1 million in death benefits to every one of those workers felled in the line of duty. It’s a war, right? Treat the people like actual warriors. 

Speaking of, did you know that real-life warriors, those who are currently wearing a uniform, or did so once upon a time, are also dying en masse? According to the latest tally, 27 Department of Defense service members, employees, and dependents have died from the disease, as well as 771 veterans inside the VA medical system. Obviously, that doesn’t count veterans who died outside of that system, but even now, we’re at nearly 800 dead (and counting). 

But Trump doesn’t care. The only time he thinks about our service members and veterans is when they serve his ego, as backdrops for his campaign or photo ops. Otherwise, perhaps he’d keep them in mind and try to minimize the carnage. 

But he doesn’t care about anyone. The end. And this toxic brew of psychotic indifference and rank incompetence means that we’re in for hundreds of thousands more deaths before we’re mercifully done with his presidency next January. 

The Republican Party will owe this country for the death and destruction it wrought, for refusing to take out Trump when it had the chance (not just impeachment, but via 25th Amendment), and that’s a debt it will never be able to repay. 

Donald Trump prepares to move into his 2020 campaign by blaming COVID-19 on China and … Joe Biden

Posted on by Mark Sumner

Being impeached has not slowed down Donald Trump’s attempts to weaponize intelligence agencies and foreign policy against political opponents. In fact, receiving a free pass from Senate Republicans in spite of overwhelming evidence of guilt has made it clear to Trump that he really can dragoon the whole mechanism of the federal government into the Trump 2020 campaign. For months, Attorney General William Barr and special Q-spiracy pal John Durham have been jetting around the world, trying to convince foreign governments to help Trump out by backing up conspiracy theories that he can use in his campaign against Joe Biden.

But as Trump prepares to kick the 2020 campaign into high gear, the situation in the world has changed. That’s going to require a whole new level of conspiracy theory. Now Ukraine is tired and China is wired as Donald Trump prepares to connect Joe Biden to the coronavirus.

Trump is preparing to launch his first major ad campaign for the 2020 election. Doing so at a time when the United States has over 1 million cases of COVID-19 and the death toll has just passed 61,000 may seem somewhat … problematic. But as Jared Kushner proved on Wednesday, the Trump White House is fully prepared to point out that there are still 327 million Americans who are not dead. Yet. That somehow makes saddling the U.S. with a third of all cases around the globe a “great success story.”

According to Politico, the first flight of ads will depict Trump as “showing leadership” despite having to fight against those darned Democrats and that enemy of the people, the free press. Undoubtably, these ads will focus on how Nancy Pelosi distracted Trump from preparing to face the novel coronavirus by moving forward with impeachment. It was, in fact, such a distraction, that Trump could barely manage to fill the entire months of January and February with golf and rallies. 

The ads will also focus on just how eager Trump is to bring back the pre-virus economy. That’s a position that might also be a bit of a hard sell considering that the 4.8% shrinkage of the economy that was reported for the first quarter is likely to look like robust growth when the second quarter numbers come in. Donald Trump personally oversaw a disaster that is the biggest national health crisis, the biggest economic crisis, the biggest crisis since World War II, and he blew it—at a cost in lives that won’t be reckoned for months to come and a cost in damage to the economy that may genuinely bring conditions worse than the Great Depression. That is not a tenable position from which to start a campaign. Not even if it comes with a whole new motto.

Clearly what Trump needs is a solution, not one that can cure the virus or bring back jobs, one that allows him to pin the whole thing on someone else. With someone else being Joe Biden.

That’s why the ads won’t just blow the patriotic Trump-ets for more jobs and how-about-that-stock-market. The Republican National Committee has already been engaged in cranking out ads, especially on right-wing outlets, to keep Trump supporters pumped about his bigly leadership in the midst of the crisis. But the angle of those ads is about to change. Coming soon to a television, computer, and phone screen near you: ads that connect Joe Biden with China, along with accusations that China both created the coronavirus and covered up its spread.

Trump has already been laying the groundwork in his daily briefings. He’s repeatedly accused China of hiding information about the origins of the coronavirus and of being responsible for its spread to the rest of the world. Trump has extended these claims to the World Health Organization, cutting off funds to this critical resource in the midst of a pandemic. And over the last week, Trump has made multiple cryptic remarks that “someone a long time ago” made the decisions that caused the COVID-19 epidemic. The introduction of these lines into the daily briefings is absolutely sitting up the next phase of blame-pinning.

As The New York Times reports, the White House is forcing intelligence agencies to dig into Trump’s conspiracy theories in China, just as they did when chasing his claims about Biden and Hillary Clinton across Europe. In particular, Trump has intelligence assets trying to find some connection between a lab in Wuhan, China that tried to prevent the spread of novel viruses, and the release of this virus. It’s part of an escalating campaign to tie what Trump has insisted on calling the “Chinese virus” to the epidemic inside the United States.

The character of that campaign goes beyond just the idea that a virus under study accidentally slipped away from researchers. Almost from the outset, Republicans like Senator Tom Cotton have been pushing the idea that the SARS-CoV-2 virus was created as a bioweapon. In truth, there’s no evidence that the coronavirus came, in any sense, out of a laboratory. Multiple studies have looked at the virus’ genetic structure and found no sign of tinkering. And while much has been made of a letter warning that the Wuhan lab needed more experienced personnel, there is no evidence that it was either studying the novel coronavirus before its release, or had anything to do with that release. That hasn’t stopped Trump from retweeting claims that the virus did come from a lab, or halted the constant stream of White House officials and Republican senators making such claims in social media, on Fox, and on right-wing radio.

But as Trump starts to crank up his campaign, both the White House and right-wing media are warming up to the idea that this weapon had one real target—Donald Trump 2020.  

Trump has already falsely claimed that Hunter Biden “walks out of China with $1.5 billion in a fund … and he’s there for one quick meeting, and he flies in on Air Force Two, I think that’s a horrible thing.” Trump has also called for an investigation into the activity of both Hunter Biden and Joe Biden in China. China has refused. Which will surely be pointed at as evidence that there’s a problem.

Neither Biden actually got billions from China. It’s not clear that either ever got anything from China. But don’t be surprised to see not just ads, but an increasing theme on the right that the coronavirus was weaponized to take down the “Trump economy.” That only the biggest crisis in a century could hope to stop the inevitable reelection of Dear Leader Donald Trump. And that both Hunter Biden and Joe Biden have connections to the people who murdered tens of thousands of Americans.

Distractions are Donald Trump’s specialties. And the biggest disaster in ages, demands the biggest, most damnable lie imaginable.

In the meantime, enjoy the ads that are giving Trump heartburn right now.

YouTube Video

Trump says he might use pandemic relief funding to extort so-called sanctuary cities

Posted on by Gabe Ortiz

Oh, not this shit again. Impeached president Donald Trump on Tuesday returned to attacking so-called sanctuary cities, but with a pandemic quid pro quo twist (I guess he really learned that lesson, right Susan Collins?): now he’s threatening to condition relief funding on local policies limiting cooperation with federal deportation agents. “Now, if it's COVID-related, I guess we can talk about it, but we'd want certain things also, including sanctuary city adjustments because we have so many people in sanctuary cities,” Trump claimed.

“Adjustments” probably means “rescinding,” because the man can’t stand anything that remotely humanizes brown people. But can he do that? No, tweeted immigration policy expert Aaron Reichlin-Melnick. “To be clear, as multiple federal courts have already ruled, Congress has to specifically give the president the authority to condition grants on sanctuary city status in order to do this—and since they haven't, he can't.” But will he try? That’s another story.

Trump also maybe confused his own very clear contempt for U.S. sanctuary cities with the reality around these policies, falsely claiming he didn’t think they’re popular, “even by radical-left folks. Because what's happening is people are being protected that shouldn't be protected and a lot of bad things are happening with sanctuary cities.”

Immigrant rights advocacy group America’s Voice pointed out in 2017 that these policies are actually pretty popular among police departments. “In order for the police to be most effective at their jobs, they need to be able to work with immigrants who report crimes, give tips, or testify as witnesses,” the group said. “In order for immigrants to trust the police, they need to know that an interaction with law enforcement won’t lead to their deportation.”

And that makes communities safer for all. “Research backs this up; one analysis has shown that sanctuary cities see 15% less crime than non-sanctuary cities,” the group continued. “Another found that two-thirds of the cities that had the highest jumps in murder rates in 2016 were not sanctuary cities—in fact, they are the opposite, generally eager to hold immigrants for ICE pick-up and detention.”

But, again, just because Trump can’t do something doesn’t mean he and henchman Stephen Miller won’t try. They’ve already exploited a pandemic that has killed nearly 60,000 Americans to, in just a just a couple of examples, deport children who are supposed to be protected by U.S. law, and implement draconian immigration changes that have been the stuff of anti-immigrant leaders’ dreams.

“We cannot allow the Trump administration to exploit a public health crisis to further their anti-immigrant agenda,” the American Civil Liberties Union tweeted in response to Trump threatening to hold funding hostage. Rep. Carolyn Maloney, House Oversight Committee chair, tweeted a simple and concise “no.” No word on this extortion threat from Sen. Collins, however.

COVID-19 news: Trump, his polls in the toilet, wants to ‘reopen America’ before fixing past failures

Posted on by Laura Clawson

No wonder Donald Trump is all over the place with his coronavirus response. (Everywhere but competence, that is—and that’s just beyond him.) His polling is looking baaaad. But he’s going in the opposite direction from what the poll indicates the public wants. Trump is trying to evade responsibility by putting the responsibility on the states, but “Most Americans disagree with the Trump administration’s position that the federal government is a backup to the states. The public seems to view this as a national crisis that requires a national response on par with the aggressive approach taken by the states,” Monmouth University Polling Institute director Patrick Murray said.

Trump wants to "reopen America" without the one thing necessary to do so safely. Namely, testing. CNN went in depth on the Trump administration’s early testing failures, about which a University of Florida expert said “What we needed was extremely aggressive leadership at the CDC level and at the national level to say, okay, these are all our plans... I don't think there was really a realization of the magnitude of the problem.” And now, without having fixed the problems that started early on, Trump wants to lift precautions “very, very, very, very soon.” Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is pushing back.

● Republican lawmakers have a message for Trump: Shut up. Turns out, those endless press briefings aren’t playing as well as he thinks they are, and that’s not just a Democrat’s opinion.

● Democrats demand answers to how a tax break benefiting Trump and Kushner got into coronavirus bill.

● At-risk janitors, housekeepers, other non-clinical hospital staffers “terrified” about coronavirus.

● D.C.'s hospitality and tourism authority announces $5 million in relief for undocumented workers. Hugely important move for a group that’s being left out of too much of the (already insufficient) assistance going to newly unemployed people.

● Trump is trying to kill the United States Postal Service as vote-by-mail becomes the best chance to save our democracy. Also on the vote-by-mail front, Georgia and Texas voting rights advocates go to court in the battle for absentee ballot access.

● Trump's White House is finally preparing for something: Beating back oversight of coronavirus relief. Impeachment provided a lot of practice and Trump’s lawyers are ready to go. Including, presumably, the one he’s trying to put in as inspector general for pandemic recovery.

● New Zealand shows us what a really 'good job,' and real leadership, looks like.

● Spurred by the coronavirus crisis, and Trump’s incompetence and corruption in dealing with it, California declares (rhetorical) independence from the undemocratic Trumpian States of America.

Trump’s White House is finally preparing for something: Beating back oversight of coronavirus relief

Posted on by Laura Clawson

Coronavirus is going to give the Trump White House another opportunity to put into play the obstruction tactics it honed during the impeachment inquiry. There’s $2 trillion in economic stimulus, including a $500 billion relief fund for businesses, about which Trump told reporters “Look, I’ll be the oversight. I’ll be the oversight.” Which, no.

Trump then nominated a White House lawyer, i.e. someone who’s been selected for loyalty to Trump, as special inspector general for pandemic recovery. Brian Miller helped obstruct investigations into Trump’s extortion of Ukraine, and now Trump wants him to do the same for investigations into pandemic recovery funds, in the guise of an inspector general—someone who’s supposed to exercise oversight rather than defend against it.

House Democrats have already started asking for documents relating to Jared Kushner’s work on supply chains for personal protective equipment and ventilators. “We are troubled by reports that Mr. Kushner’s actions—and those of outside advisers he has assembled and tasked—may be ‘circumventing protocols that ensure all states’ requests are handled appropriately,’” Reps. Bennie Thompson and Carolyn Maloney wrote. “We are particularly troubled that Mr. Kushner’s work may even involve ‘directing FEMA and HHS officials to prioritize specific requests from people who are able to get Kushner on the phone.’”

But while the Trump White House wasn’t prepared to fight coronavirus, it’s certainly prepared to fight attempts at congressional oversight, including subpoenas.

Much of the House oversight will be run through a special select committee Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced last week, to be headed by Rep. Jim Clyburn. Expect it to involve a series of protracted legal battles as White House lawyers move to block any and all information. Can’t have the peons knowing what Prince Jared’s been doing, after all. Let alone the would-be king, Donald.

A few Republicans furrow their brows over Trump’s inspectors general purge

Posted on by Laura Clawson

Donald Trump’s firing of two inspectors general and public attack on a third, amid reports that he plans a broader purge of inspectors general, is drawing bipartisan concern—for now, anyway. 

Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley is working on a letter asking Trump to explain his firing of Michael Atkinson, the intelligence community IG who referred the Ukraine call whistleblower’s report to Congress, helping to trigger Trump’s impeachment. Of course, that right there is the explanation for Trump’s firing of Atkinson, so asking for information is kind of performative. Sens. Mitt Romney and Susan Collins are backing Grassley’s letter—but we know that only one of those three people has any possibility of actually standing up to Trump rather than plastering on a furrowed brow and folding.

“It is our responsibility to confirm that there are clear, substantial reasons for removal,” a draft of Grassley’s letter viewed by The Washington Post says. Which there are! They’re just totally corrupt reasons. And since every Senate Republican but one has let Trump know that they will never put any teeth in their concerns about him, he can safely ignore this like he has every other attempt at congressional oversight.

Trump also fired the acting inspector general for the Pentagon just before he was to take a position heading the panel conducting oversight of the $2 trillion coronavirus stimulus. You know, the one where Trump claimed “I’ll be the oversight” amid concerns that he would use the money as a slush fund to reward allies.

Additionally, he publicly attacked Christi Grimm, the Health and Human Services inspector general who issued a coronavirus response report that didn’t make the Trump administration look great.

Democrats are drafting bills to strengthen oversight of coronavirus stimulus funds and to protect inspectors general from firing without “evidence-based good cause,” in addition to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s formation of a select committee to look into the Trump administration’s handling of the pandemic by issuing subpoenas that will be ignored.

Donald Trump is a corrupt and lawless president and he intends to use this crisis to free himself further from accountability and oversight.

Stephanie Grisham out as White House press secretary. Don’t feel bad if you’re asking ‘who?’

Posted on by Laura Clawson

Consider it the political version of “if a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, did it really make a sound?” If a White House press secretary never gives a press briefing, did she really do the job? Yes, White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham is on her way out—or anyway, she’s headed back to the East Wing to serve as Melania Trump’s chief of staff.

As White House press secretary, Grisham spent her time going on Fox News or media outlets to the right of Fox. She put her name on statements claiming that impeachment was derailing legislative progress (when really Mitch McConnell’s Senate was derailing legislative progress) and calling for "retribution" against Rep. Adam Schiff. She was forced to backtrack after claiming that Obama aides left mean notes for the incoming Trump administration. She claimed that Donald Trump doesn't tell lies.

Grisham’s qualifications for the job included a history of retaliating against reporters for negative coverage and having lost previous jobs for plagiarism and cheating on expense reports.

Grisham is reportedly leaving the job as part of a shake-up by new White House chief of staff Mark Meadows. Names being floated to replace her include campaign spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany; Defense Department spokeswoman Alyssa Farah may also be in line for a communications role. Except it’s not clear if the White House communications department will regain any relevance with Trump still taking the role of head spokesman and changing message on a whim.

Susan Collins has nothing to say about lessons in latest post-impeachment retaliation from Trump

Posted on by Joan McCarter

Sen. Susan Collins didn't even manage to work herself up to "concerned" in reacting to impeached president Donald Trump's firing of Michael Atkinson from his post as Intelligence Community inspector general. "I have long been a strong advocate for the Inspectors General," the senator, a member of the Senate Select Committee Intelligence wrote.

Then she fluffed herself a bit. "In 2008, I coauthored with former Senators Claire McCaskill and Joe Lieberman The Inspector General Reform Act (P.L. 110-40), which among other provisions requires the President to notify the Congress 30 days prior to the removal of an Inspector General along with the reasons for the removal. In notifying Congress yesterday, the President followed the procedures in that law," and here's where we finally get to her reaction. "I did not find his rationale for removing Inspector General Atkinson to be persuasive."

Let's make sure her time is up. Please give $1 to help Democrats in each of these crucial Senate races, but especially the one in Maine!

So what are you going to do about it, Senator? "While I recognize that the President has the authority to appoint and remove Inspectors General, I believe Inspector General Atkinson served the Intelligence Community and the American people well, and his removal was not warranted." Oh, that's it? You're not going to do anything? Even fret your brow?

Fortunately for Collins, this time Trump has retaliated against a perceived enemy, there aren't any reporters around to remind her about that whole "the president has learned from" impeachment nonsense. She gets to issue statements from self-isolation without having to face questions about her own culpability for Trump's actions.