President Donald Trump expressed his displeasure Thursday with a Fox News poll that found a majority of registered voters believe he should be impeached — a record high in the survey.
The poll came after House Democrats opened an impeachment inquiry into the president over his call to have his Ukrainian counterpart investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, a top political rival.
Two foreign-born associates of Rudy Giuliani who gave money to a political action committee supporting President Donald Trump were arrested Wednesday night on criminal charges tied to an alleged effort to influence U.S. politics with illegal campaign contributions.
Igor Fruman and Lev Parnas — who are also both witnesses in the impeachment inquiry being undertaken by House Democrats — made an initial appearance in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, Thursday.
The Constitution is pretty fucking clear in how vague it is about impeachment. All it says in Article I is “The House of Representatives shall choose their speaker and other officers; and shall have the sole power of impeachment” and “The Senate shall have the sole power to try all impeachments” with more procedure following there. But that’s after impeachment in the House. In Article II, you get this: the president “shall have power to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States, except in cases of impeachment.” That’s interesting, no? Oh, and this: “The President…shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.” There’s also something about a jury not being required.
President Donald Trump offered a bizarre defense for his abrupt decision to pull back US forces from northern Syria and expose our Kurdish allies to attack from the Turkish military, citing the Kurds absence from the Normandy invasion 75 years ago as a reason for abandoning them.
“The Kurds are fighting for their land, just so you understand, they’re fighting for their land,” Trump said at a White House event on Wednesday. “And as somebody wrote in a very, very powerful article today, they didn’t help us in the Second World War, they didn’t help us with Normandy, as an example, they mention names of different battles. But they’re there to help us with their land.”
Turkish forces continued their advance into northeastern Syria Thursday after launching an air and ground offensive against Kurdish fighters, the Turkish defense ministry said in a tweet.
The Turkish defense ministry offered no further information but posted a video of Turkish troops stalking their way through the long grass west of the Euphrates river and said the operation, codenamed Peace Spring, had gone successfully.
Former Vice President Joe Biden called for President Donald Trump to be impeached during a blistering campaign speech on Wednesday.
“Donald Trump has violated his oath of office, betrayed this nation and committed impeachable acts,” Biden said in his strongest comments to date on the matter, adding, “He should be impeached.”
Even as the White House appears to settle on the legal tactics to stave off Democrats’ impeachment demands, uncertainty and unease over Trump’s messaging approach remains high among his Republican allies, who see the ever-growing inquiry consuming the White House.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi has fired back at the White House over the letter to Congress refusing to cooperate with the House’s impeachment inquiry.
The Trump administration is calling the inquiry “constitutionally illegitimate” and accusing the Democrats of sham proceedings.
Tonight Pelosi says, “For a while, the President has tried to normalize lawlessness. Now, he is trying to make lawlessness a virtue.”
There are countless possible explanations, but it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that Donald Trump decided to allow Turkey to attack the Kurds in northern Syria in order to crowbar the news cycle away from his impeachment. But as I’ve been writing from the beginning, Trump always makes things worse for Trump. Instead of tamping down the impeachment story, he’s merely augmenting the justifications for his constitutional removal from office.
Apart from the bloody foolishness of his snap decision, which I’ll cover here presently, my first reaction was this: What did Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a fellow autocrat, offer Trump in return for abandoning U.S. allies in the region, both the Kurds and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF)? What kind of election interference did Erdogan pledge to Trump? Or did Trump cave because his beloved Trump Tower Istanbul was threatened with demolition? Here’s a big one: What if Trump made this decision without all of his marbles in attendance?
A White House official who listened to President Trump’s July phone call with Ukraine’s leader described it as “crazy,” “frightening,” and “completely lacking in substance related to national security,” according to a memo written by the whistle-blower at the center of the Ukraine scandal, a C.I.A. officer who spoke to the White House official.
The White House official was “visibly shaken by what had transpired,” the C.I.A. officer wrote in his memo, one day after Mr. Trump pressured President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine in a July 25 phone call to open investigations that would benefit him politically.
A seemingly divided Supreme Court on Tuesday heard highly anticipated cases on whether federal civil rights law should apply to LGBTQ people, with Chief Justice John Roberts questioning how doing so would affect employers. In the first of two cases, the justices heard arguments on whether a federal law banning job discrimination on the basis of sex should also protect sexual orientation.
House Democrats are preparing to subpoena a central witness in the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump after he bowed to a State Department order to skip a deposition on Tuesday.
Gordon Sondland, Trump’s ambassador to the European Union, had been expected to testify Tuesday morning as part of an expanding impeachment probe by three House committees related to Trump’s efforts to press Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden. Trump endorsed the decision to block Sondland’s testimony in a tweet, accusing Democrats of running a “kangaroo court.”
Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, has been directed not to appear Tuesday for a scheduled interview with House committees leading the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump.
Sondland, a Trump political appointee, has emerged as a central player in Trump’s bid to persuade Ukraine’s new government to commit publicly to investigate corruption and the president’s political opponents.
The House on Monday expanded its sprawling impeachment inquiry, issuing subpoenas to the Defense Department and the Office of Management and Budget for documents that could solve lingering mysteries about whether President Trump’s decision to withhold security aid for Ukraine was tied to his efforts to pressure the government there to investigate his political rivals.
The action kicked off what was expected to be another busy week of investigation in Washington, where questions related to Ukraine appear increasingly likely to result in a vote on Mr. Trump’s impeachment.
The intel whistleblower is expected to speak to the House Intelligence Committee, but per new reporting today, Democrats are taking steps to “mask” the whistleblower’s identity from Republicans over concerns it would get leaked.
The Washington Post reports on some “extraordinary” steps being considered by House Democrats to “to prevent Trump’s congressional allies from revealing the identity” of the whistleblower
President Trump didn’t let intense Republican criticism of his decision to withdraw troops from northern Syria rattle him Monday, insisting he made the right call in deciding to leave the unstable region to Turkey and other actors.
Experts and the president’s own allies like Senator Lindsey Graham fear the decision to withdraw from the region will endanger Kurdish allies there, with Turkey threatening to overwhelm them. Mr. Trump, asked why he’s siding with authoritarian Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan over Kurdish allies, insisted he’s not siding with anyone and is adhering to his campaign promise of “America first.”
Aimee Stephens finally mustered the courage back in 2013 to tell her co-workers about something that she had struggled with her entire life: her gender identity.
You get the feeling now that, with time running out on El Caudillo del Mar-a-Lago and his retinue of crooks and mountebanks, all the dark debts he owes to people for their help in getting elected are coming due, the debts to Vladimir Putin and the Volga Bagmen first among them. There was the extortion plot aimed at a newly elected president of Ukraine whose country already was in what is at the very least a warm war with Russia. Now, in a decision announced in the dark of a Sunday night, the administration has decided essentially to green-light a potential slaughter of the Kurdish fighters who did so much to dislodge ISIS in Iraq.
A long list of Republicans — including several top allies of President Donald Trump — lined up in vehement opposition Monday to the president’s decision to withdraw U.S. forces from the northern border of Syria and allow a Turkish operation there.
The announcement marked a major blow to the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF, which the U.S. relied upon heavily as the most effective fighting force against the Islamic State militant group in Syria — and prompted outrage among GOP lawmakers.
House Democrats on Monday issued a pair of subpoenas to Defense Secretary Mark Esper and Office of Management and Budget Acting Director Russell Vought demanding documents and communications regarding President Donald Trump’s decision to suspend U.S. aid to Ukraine.
Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., issued the subpoenas as part of Democrats’ impeachment inquiry in consultation with House Oversight Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings, D-Md., and House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Eliot Engel, D-N.Y.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit on Monday granted President Donald Trump a last-minute reprieve in his effort to prevent New York prosecutors from obtaining his tax records.
The stay was issued not long after a federal judge rejected Trump’s claim that he was immune from criminal investigations in a bid to block a subpoena from the Manhattan district attorney seeking eight years of personal and business tax returns.
Donald Trump got “rolled” by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a National Security Council source with direct knowledge of the discussions told Newsweek.
In a scheduled phone call on Sunday afternoon between President Trump and President Erdogan, Trump said he would withdraw U.S. forces from northern Syria. The phone call was scheduled after Turkey announced it was planning to invade Syria, and hours after Erdogan reinforced his army units at the Syrian-Turkish border and issued his strongest threat to launch a military incursion, according to the National Security Council official to whom Newsweek spoke on condition of anonymity.
President Donald Trump unleashed on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Rep. Adam Schiff in a pair of furious tweets late Sunday night — absurdly accusing the Democratic lawmakers of “High Crimes and Misdemeanors, and even Treason.”
Trump has been fixated on comments Schiff gave last week in which he paraphrased the president’s call with the president of Ukraine. The president also claimed in his latest tweets that Schiff’s meeting with the whistleblower were “illegal,” though it’s unclear how, because Schiff never met with the whistleblower.
In a heated Meet The Press interview with NBC host Chuck Todd Sunday, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) accused the CIA and the FBI of conspiring against President Donald Trump — and even declared that he doesn’t trust the government agencies.
“Ukrainian officials reportedly helped Clinton allies research Trump’s advisers,” claimed Johnson. “There is potential interference in the 2016 campaign. That’s what Trump wants to get to the bottom of. But the press doesn’t want to.”
Turkey is about to invade the part of Syria the U.S. invaded to defeat the so-called Islamic State. Except Turkey is invading it to defeat the Kurdish proxy force the U.S. relied on to defeat ISIS, because Turkey considers that proxy a terrorist group. And U.S. President Donald J. Trump, apparently, is fine with that.
This according to a White House announcement released late Sunday evening that reads as if it were written by someone who wants absolutely nothing to do with a part of a world as fucked up as the Middle East and doesn’t care if the whole place burns to the ground.
Donald Trump’s stupefying public performances last Wednesday as the widening collusion scandal continued to gain momentum were stunning, even by his erratic standards. Trump uncorked rambling, incoherent, angry, whiny monologues that were filled with lies and rattled conspiracy theories. That’s when he wasn’t yelling at a Reuters reporter and threatening to sue members of Congress. Incredibly, both disturbing Alex Jones-style performances were delivered inside the White House by a sitting American president.
The two sessions with reporters advertised an unstable man who clearly is not attached to reality and has no interest trying to be. They featured a president who had trouble articulating coherent thoughts and who lied at an astonishing rate. They really did perfectly capture the lunacy that has become the Trump presidency. But how did the Beltway press cover the mighty Trump meltdown, and specifically his joint press conference with the president of Finland?
16 – Number of times Trump declared his conversation with Ukraine’s President Zelensky “perfect”
12 – Number of times Trump said the conversation or something else was “nice” (note: Trump was not nice in the conversation.)
3 – Number of times Trump brought up Lindsey Graham telling him “I never knew you were that nice” (or a slight variation on that) in regards to the conversation
3 – Number of times Trump said that Adam Schiff committed treason by paraphrasing Trump’s conversation with Zelensky (note: Schiff was very clear that he was paraphrasing. You’d have to be a fucking moron to think he was reciting the actual words used.)
Mark Zaid, the attorney representing the whistleblower who sounded the alarm on President Donald Trump’s dealings with Ukraine and triggered an impeachment inquiry, tells ABC News that he is now representing a second whistleblower who has spoken with the inspector general.
Zaid tells ABC News’ Chief Anchor George Stephanopoulos that the second person — also described as an intelligence official — has first-hand knowledge of some of the allegations outlined in the original complaint and has been interviewed by the head of the intelligence community’s internal watchdog office, Michael Atkinson.
House Democrats leading the impeachment inquiry of President Donald Trump have issued a subpoena to White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, saying that the president’s repeated claim of executive privilege and stonewalling of various committees’ document requests “have left us with not choice.”
Committee chairs Adam Schiff, Eliot Engel, and Elijah Cummings sent a four-page letter to the White House on Friday night, demanding that Mulvaney comply with their respective committees’ inquiries by October 18th.
President Donald Trump announced Friday that legal immigrants will be denied visas unless they can prove they have health insurance or the means to cover medical costs.
The rule, which takes effect Nov. 3, is part of a broader effort within the administration that seeks to make it more difficult for low-income legal immigrants who receive food stamps or other taxpayer-funded assistance to stay in the country.
Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders suffered a heart attack, his campaign confirmed on Friday after he departed Desert Springs Hospital Medical Center in Las Vegas.
A second intelligence official with concerns and more direct knowledge regarding President Donald Trump’s dealings with Ukraine is considering filing a whistleblower complaint, The New York Times reported Friday.
Text messages given to Congress show U.S. ambassadors working to persuade Ukraine to publicly commit to investigating President Donald Trump’s political opponents and explicitly linking the inquiry to whether Ukraine’s president would be granted an official White House visit.
The two ambassadors, both Trump picks, went so far as to draft language for what Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy should say, the texts indicate. The messages, released Thursday by House Democrats conducting an impeachment inquiry, show the ambassadors coordinating with both Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani and a top Zelenskiy aide.
When William Barr was appointed attorney general, I believed he was capable of sticking to the rule of law and ensuring the Department of Justice maintained the public trust in the midst of an investigation of the president. I said as much on live TV.
I was wrong. William Barr has eroded public trust in government and the rule of law and has earned himself an impeachment inquiry of his own. It is a grave and sad statement to make, and I don’t make it lightly.
An Internal Revenue Service official has filed a whistleblower complaint reporting that he was told at least one Treasury Department political appointee attempted to improperly interfere with the annual audit of the president or vice president’s tax returns, according to multiple people familiar with the document.
Trump administration officials dismissed the whistleblower’s complaint as flimsy because it is based on conversations with other government officials. But congressional Democrats were alarmed by the complaint, now circulating on Capitol Hill, and flagged it to a federal judge. They are also discussing whether to make it public.
The former US special envoy for Ukraine told House lawmakers on Thursday that he warned President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani that the information he was receiving from Ukrainian political figures about former Vice President Joe Biden and his son was not credible, The Washington Post reported Thursday, citing two people familiar with his testimony.
Ensnarled in an impeachment investigation over his request for Ukraine to investigate a chief political rival, President Donald Trump on Thursday called on another nation to probe former Vice President Joe Biden: China.
“China should start an investigation into the Bidens,” Trump said in remarks to reporters outside the White House. Trump said he hadn’t directly asked Chinese President Xi Jinping to investigate Biden and his son Hunter but said it’s “certainly something we could start thinking about.”
The intelligence community employee who has accused President Donald Trump of abusing his office filed his whistleblower complaint after first consulting with an aide to the Democratic chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, a committee spokesman acknowledged Wednesday, touching off a firestorm of criticism from Republicans.
But while President Trump and others accused House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., of orchestrating the complaint, Democratic committee aides told NBC News that what happened was rather routine, and no different from the two to three times a month an intelligence agency employee comes to them with concerns.
Vice President Mike Pence’s last-minute September meeting with the Ukrainian President has pulled him into a mess he has worked hard to avoid: a crisis involving his boss, President Donald Trump.
2020 candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., was hospitalized Tuesday in Las Vegas and underwent a significant medical procedure after a blockage was found in one of his arteries, his campaign said Wednesday.
Sanders, who is 78, has canceled all of his campaign events “until further notice.”
“During a campaign event yesterday evening, Sen. Sanders experienced some chest discomfort. Following medical evaluation and testing he was found to have a blockage in one artery and two stents were successfully inserted,” Jeff Weaver, a senior adviser to the Sanders campaign, said in a statement.
President Donald Trump’s growing frustration with Democrats’ amped up impeachment efforts was on stark public display Wednesday as he spent the day openly raging against the media and his political rivals.
In the stretch of a few hours, Trump called Democratic impeachment efforts “BULLSHIT,” got into a verbal altercation with a reporter during a press conference, and delivered unfounded claims about his political rivals. His anger was visible — his face flushed at times, his voice raised, his gestures increasingly animated.
House Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) warned Wednesday that any White House attempts to stonewall the House impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump could further solidify accusations of obstruction of justice.
“If they are going to prevent witnesses from going forward to testify on the allegations in the whistleblower complaint, that will create an adverse inference that those allegations are, in fact, correct,” Schiff said during a press conference with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) in which he responded to what he called Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s attempt “to potentially interfere with witnesses.”
The State Department inspector general provided Congress on Wednesday a packet of dozens of pages of documents that make many of the same unproven claims about Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, that Rudy Giuliani and his allies have been making, according to a copy of the documents obtained by CNN.
The documents include claims against the Bidens as well as charges against former US Ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, who was recalled earlier this year and whom President Donald Trump criticized in his July call with the Ukrainian president. The packet also included internal State Department emails from officials discussing articles critical of Yovanovitch, calling some of it a “fake narrative.”
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo confirmed on Wednesday that he had listened in on President Trump’s telephone conversation with the president of Ukraine — a call that has become the subject of a whistle-blower’s complaint and is at the heart of an impeachment inquiry by House Democrats.
“I was on the phone call,” Mr. Pompeo said at a news conference in Rome — the first time he has addressed the topic publicly since reports surfaced that he had heard the exchange.
The Oval Office meeting this past March began, as so many had, with President Trump fuming about migrants. But this time he had a solution. As White House advisers listened astonished, he ordered them to shut down the entire 2,000-mile border with Mexico — by noon the next day.
The advisers feared the president’s edict would trap American tourists in Mexico, strand children at schools on both sides of the border and create an economic meltdown in two countries. Yet they also knew how much the president’s zeal to stop immigration had sent him lurching for solutions, one more extreme than the next.
The State Department’s inspector general is expected to give an “urgent” briefing to staffers from several House and Senate committees on Wednesday afternoon about documents obtained from the department’s Office of the Legal Adviser related to the State Department and Ukraine, sources familiar with the planned briefing told ABC News.
Details of the briefing, requested by Steve Linick, the inspector general at State, remain unknown. Linick is expected to meet with congressional staff in a secure location on Capitol Hill.
When President Donald Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani appeared on cable news programs last week, he deflected questions about his work in Ukraine and instead hammered home one talking point over and over again: The State Department knew he was trying to dig up dirt on 2020 presidential candidate Joe Biden and his son Hunter.
Giuliani waved his phone on air, flashing text messages between himself and State Department representatives and saying it was the department that connected him to a close adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Giuliani’s on-air appearances threw the department into a tizzy, forcing Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to try to put a lid on the crisis of confidence bubbling up under him, according to three senior U.S. officials. For Pompeo, solving the problem meant finding someone to blame—and there was only one individual who fit the mold, according to those same sources: former U.S. representative for Ukraine negotiations Kurt Volker.
Ever since Nancy Pelosi first announced the launching of an impeachment inquiry, many of us jumped forward in time to the Senate trial that would follow an impeachment vote in the House, wondering out loud whether Mitch McConnell would block Donald Trump’s trial from ever taking place. I thought for sure McConnell would pull a Merrick Garland stunt and insist that the trial couldn’t take place within a year of the presidential election, and then perhaps hold a procedural vote to back up his would-be scam.
It turns out, however, that McConnell has no choice but to allow the trial to commence, should the House vote to impeach the president — and it looks like Nancy Pelosi has whipped enough votes to make it all but certain that Donald Trump will become only the third president in history to be impeached by the House, and the third to be tried in the Senate per the language of Article I, Section 3 of the Constitution.
House Democrats issued a stark warning to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo Tuesday after the top US diplomat accused lawmakers of “intimidating and bullying” State Department officials by calling them for depositions related to the Ukraine inquiry.
A top Republican senator Tuesday defended the whistleblower at the center of the Democrats’ impeachment inquiry following repeated attacks from President Donald Trump.
“This person appears to have followed the whistleblower protection laws and ought to be heard out and protected. We should always work to respect whistleblowers’ requests for confidentiality,” Sen. Chuck Grassley, head of the powerful Senate Finance Committee, said in a statement.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Tuesday pushed back against a request by a key House committee to interview five current or former State Department officials as part of an impeachment inquiry centering on the Ukraine scandal, accusing House Democrats of attempting to “intimidate” and “bully” them.
“I am concerned with aspects of your request … that can be understood only as an attempt to intimidate, bully, and treat improperly the distinguished professionals of the Department of State, including several career Foreign Service Officers, whom the committee is now targeting,” Pompeo wrote in a letter to House Foreign Affairs Chairman Eliot Engel, D-N.Y.
Rudy Giuliani, the outspoken personal attorney for Donald Trump, has hired his own lawyer to represent him in the House’s fast-moving impeachment investigation into the president.
The former New York mayor tapped Jon Sale, a former Watergate prosecutor and assistant U.S. attorney, in what’s shaping up to be a battle with Democrats over documents tied to Giuliani’s efforts to pressure Ukraine’s leader on behalf of the president to investigate Joe Biden.
New York GOP Rep. Chris Collins has resigned his seat effective Monday, according to a Republican source, one day ahead of an expected guilty plea to federal insider trading charges.
The 69-year-old Collins, one of the first GOP lawmakers to back President Donald Trump before the 2016 election, is scheduled to make an appearance in federal court Tuesday in Manhattan. Collins will plead guilty to insider trading charges related to his investment in an Australian biotech firm, according to court documents and GOP sources.
Bernie Sanders raised more than $25 million in the third quarter of his presidential campaign, his aides announced Tuesday.
The large haul demonstrates that the Vermont senator, despite slipping to third place behind Elizabeth Warren and Joe Biden in national polling averages, remains a fundraising juggernaut. Sanders also recently revealed that 1 million people have donated to his bid for the White House — a milestone he reached faster than any Democratic presidential candidate in history.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was on the July phone call where President Donald Trump asked his Ukrainian counterpart to investigate Joe Biden and his son, a senior State Department official told NBC News.
The July 25 phone call between Trump and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy and a related whistleblower complaint are now at the center of House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry.
Read the rest of the story at NBC News.
Americans are about evenly split over impeaching President Donald Trump and removing him from office, as support for that move has risen among independents and Republicans, according to a new CNN poll conducted by SSRS after the announcement of a formal impeachment inquiry by House Democrats last week.
Americans are about evenly split over impeaching President Donald Trump and removing him from office, as support for that move has risen among independents and Republicans, according to a new CNN poll conducted by SSRS after the announcement of a formal impeachment inquiry by House Democrats last week.
President Donald Trump pressed Australia’s Prime Minister during a recent phone call to help Attorney General William Barr with his review of the origins of the Russia probe, according to an official familiar with the call.
Congressman Adam Schiff and the other chairmen of the House committees looking into Camp Runamuck seem dreadfully intimidated by the fuming and fussing on the electric Twitter machine.
The letter specifically cites a now famous interview on September 19 with Chris Cuomo on CNN in which Giuliani bounced from saying that he had not asked the Ukrainian government to investigate the Bidens to answering a question about whether he had by saying, “Of course, I did,” in the space of about three minutes.
House Democrats have subpoenaed President Donald Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani for Ukraine-related documents as part of their impeachment inquiry.
“Pursuant to the House of Representatives’ impeachment inquiry, we are hereby transmitting a subpoena that compels you to produce the documents set forth in the accompanying schedule by October 15, 2019,” the letter from House Intelligence chair Adam Schiff, Oversight chair Elijah Cummings and Foreign Affairs chair Eliot Engel says.
President Donald Trump said Sunday that he wants to meet the whistleblower behind the bombshell complaint at the center of his historic impeachment inquiry.
“Like every American, I deserve to meet my accuser, especially when this accuser, the so-called ‘Whistleblower,’ represented a perfect conversation with a foreign leader in a totally inaccurate and fraudulent way,” Trump tweeted about the complaint, which alleges the president tried to get Ukraine to interfere in the 2020 U.S. elections and that the White House tried to hide the attempts.
President Donald Trump ominously raised the possibility of national violence Sunday if he is removed from office, quoting an evangelical pastor who warned on Fox News of a “Civil War-like” fracture.
Illinois Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger, an Air Force veteran of Iraq, quickly slammed Trump’s tweet as “beyond repugnant,” adding: “I have never imagined such a quote to be repeated by a President.”
President Donald Trump‘s administration is investigating the emails of dozens of current and former senior State Department officials who sent emails to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton‘s private email, The Washington Post reported Saturday.
President Donald Trump attacked “Democrat savages” in a vicious new tweet Saturday following the launch of a formal impeachment inquiry — and specifically referred to four congresswomen of color and Jewish lawmakers Rep. Jerry Nadler (N.Y.) and Rep. Adam Schiff (Calif.).
He singled out the women even though as of Saturday they were among at least 223 House Democrats who now support an impeachment inquiry. Nader is head of the House Judiciary Committee, and Schiff leads the Intelligence Committee, both key groups in the impeachment inquiry against Trump.
Rudy Giuliani has had many identities in his time on the public stage. A crusading federal prosecutor who struck terror in mobsters and Wall Street titans alike. A sometimes-cantankerous New York City mayor who became a national hero for his stirring leadership after the 9/11 attacks. And, currently, President Donald Trump’s unpaid attorney in the Russia collusion investigation being led by Robert Mueller.
In this week’s episode of “Trump, Inc.,” we’re digging into a part of Giuliani’s work that has occurred largely outside of the spotlight: He has often traveled to Russia or other former Soviet states as the guest of powerful players there. And since Trump was elected, he appears to have stepped up the frequency of those trips.
As soon as President Trump learned he was facing an impeachment investigation on Tuesday, he upended his meetings with world leaders near the United Nations and rushed to his soaring skyscraper a few blocks away in midtown Manhattan.
Then, back in his penthouse at Trump Tower, he sought solace at his favorite place — in front of a TV with his Twitter account in hand.
After some initial hesitation on how to defend Donald Trump from allegations of trying to collude with the Ukraine government to influence the 2020 campaign, when Trump himself had admitted to doing exactly that, Fox News and most of the right-wing echo chamber have rallied around White House talking points. Robotically defending Trump and pitching the unfolding impeachment proceedings as another so-called witch hunt, Fox News is leading the Trump media charge. (It’s a “coup“!)
But will the caterwauling be enough this time?
It’s pretty goddamn clear that the motherfuckin’ quid has a motherfuckin’ pro quo in the weird pseudo-transcript of the July 25 phone call between Donald Trump and President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine. And a great deal of it all comes down to the word “though.”
Zelensky says, “I would also like to thank you for your great support in the area of defense. We are ready to continue to cooperate for the next steps. Specifically we are almost ready to buy more Javelins from the United States for defense purposes.”
U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on Saturday that public opinion is now on the side of an impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump following the release of new information about his conversations with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
Pelosi this week announced her support for an investigation after the surfacing of a whistleblower complaint that said Trump appeared to solicit a political favor from Ukraine’s president aimed at helping him be re-elected next year.
Read the rest of the story at HuffPost.
President Trump met in the Oval Office on Friday with Wayne LaPierre, the chief executive of the National Rifle Association, and discussed prospective gun legislation and whether the N.R.A. could provide support for the president as he faces impeachment and a more difficult re-election campaign, according to two people familiar with the meeting.
It was not clear whether Mr. Trump asked Mr. LaPierre for his support, or if the idea was pitched by the N.R.A. During the meeting, Mr. LaPierre asked that the White House “stop the games” over gun control legislation, people familiar with the meeting said.
White House efforts to limit access to President Donald Trump’s conversations with foreign leaders extended to phone calls with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Russian leader Vladimir Putin, according to people familiar with the matter.
Another stunning report dropped tonight, this one concerning President Donald Trump’s infamous 2017 conversation with Russian officials in the Oval Office.
Per the Washington Post, Trump said he was “unconcerned” about Russian election interference because “the United States did the same in other countries”
Three top Democratic House chairmen on Friday subpoenaed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to turn over documents related to the House’s impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump’s dealings with Ukraine.
The three chairmen — Reps. Eliot Engel of the Foreign Affairs Committee; Adam Schiff of the Intelligence Committee; and Elijah Cummings of the Oversight Committee — wrote a letter demanding that Pompeo turn over documents related to Trump’s July 25 call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy by Oct. 4.
WASHINGTON – Rep. Maxine Waters (CA-43) issued the following statement on the formal impeachment inquiry of Donald J. Trump:
“I am supportive of the leadership of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi who has united the Democratic Caucus and has formalized an impeachment inquiry of the current President of the United States. Donald Trump has admitted to abusing the power of the presidency by asking Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to launch an investigation into his political opponent in order to get dirt that the Trump campaign could exploit in the 2020 U.S. presidential election. This action within itself — where the president is seeking the cooperation and assistance of a foreign government in uncovering dirt on his opponent — is unlawful, unconstitutional, and unpatriotic. I am elated that the Congress of the United States will move forward in an expedited manner to investigate and impeach this president.
“When you couple this latest action with all that we know about the president, his history, and the way in which he has conducted himself while in office, there is more than enough evidence for the Congress of the United States to launch an impeachment inquiry into this president. Despite the fact that U.S. intelligence community unequivocally concluded that Russia interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, this president has shown a brazen support and deference for Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin and has continued to undermine and outright deny the validity of the U.S. intelligence community’s findings. Special Counsel Robert Mueller identified at least 10 instances of obstruction of justice by the president of the United States during the 2016 presidential campaign and through the course of the Russia investigation, and he furthered the scope of what we know about collusion and coordination between the Trump campaign, Trump’s allies, and the Kremlin in their efforts to undermine our election systems on Trump’s behalf. This president orchestrated hush money payments in order to silence his mistresses with the aid of his personal attorney, Michael Cohen, who pled guilty and is serving jail time for these acts, which are potential felony violations of campaign finance laws. He and his children have sought out opportunities to enrich themselves during his tenure as president. He is under investigation for accepting payments from foreign governments and officials that have stayed at his hotels and golf properties in violation of the Constitution’s emoluments clause, which prohibits elected officials from personally profiting from payments from foreign governments and officials that have stayed at his hotels and golf properties. This president has been documented by the Washington Post for having lied more than 12,000 times since taking office. Unlike any other president in modern history, Trump has refused to release his tax returns to the American people. These, and a host of other actions, are further evidence of his disgraceful and contemptible actions as the president of the United States.
“I’m beyond pleased that a strong majority of my Democratic colleagues have joined us in the effort to hold accountable and impeach the most unlawful and unpatriotic man to ever occupy the White House. As I have stated time and time again, Donald Trump is a dangerous and dishonorable man. He has no respect for our democracy, our Constitution, or the rule of law. It is past time that Congress fulfills its Constitutional duty to impeach him. I am elated that it appears that day is upon us.”
In a detailed, nine-page complaint, a whistleblower said “senior White House officials” worked to “lock down” all records of a presidential phone call this summer, out of fear that “they had witnessed the president abuse his office for personal gain.” In that call, President Trump repeatedly urged Ukraine’s new president to investigate Joe Biden and his son.
The whistleblower said White House officials were “deeply disturbed” and were “directed” by White House lawyers to remove a transcript of the call from the regular computer system and place it instead in a separate system normally reserved for classified, sensitive information.
White House officials were scrambling Thursday to figure out how to counter the House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry, with one source familiar with the situation describing a sense of “total panic” over the past week at the lack of a plan to address the new reality.
There appears to be rising “anxiety, unease, and concern” — as one person close to the White House described the mood in the West Wing — that the whistleblower’s allegations could seriously wound the president and some of those around him. “There’s not a lot of confidence that there’s no there there,” this person said.
The first polling on the question of whether or not President Donald Trump should be impeached since House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced that she’s supporting an impeachment inquiry shows a major swing — one which leaves the public split right down the middle.
According to the Morning Consult, there has been a 13 point swing in favor of impeachment in just a matter of days. The new poll, taken from Sept. 24-26, shows the public in a 43-43 deadlock on the question of whether Congress should begin impeachment proceedings to remove Trump from office. The same poll, conducted from Sept. 20-22, shows 36 in favor of beginning impeachment proceedings, with 49 percent opposed — a massive swing in such a short period of time.
President Donald Trump ratcheted up his defenses on Thursday, likening those who provided information to the whistleblower to spies, according to reports, and tweeting that “our country is at stake” on the day the complaint against the president was made public.
“THE DEMOCRATS ARE TRYING TO DESTROY THE REPUBLICAN PARTY AND ALL THAT IT STANDS FOR,” Trump tweeted in all caps. “STICK TOGETHER, PLAY THEIR GAME, AND FIGHT HARD REPUBLICANS. OUR COUNTRY IS AT STAKE!”
A whistleblower’s complaint about President Donald Trump, made public on Thursday, says White House officials were so concerned about what the president said in a July call with Ukraine’s new leader that they intervened to “lock down” the transcript of the conversation.
The whistleblower, whose name and gender has not been released, lodged the formal complaint out of a belief that Trump was “using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country” in the 2020 election.
A longtime GOP insider is claiming that if a majority of Republican senators could cast their ballot in secret, they would vote President Donald Trump out of office.
Appearing on Andrea Mitchell Reports Wednesday, Mike Murphy — a former senior adviser to Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) and John McCain — claimed that the politics of the Ukraine controversy scare the GOP. Murphy contended that an impeachment proceeding in which moderate senators would be forced to back the president would put a number of seats at risk.
In what sounds like a scene straight out of “Veep,” the White House on Wednesday accidentally emailed all of its talking points on President Donald Trump’s call with the Ukrainian president to House and Senate Democrats ― and then followed up with a “recall” email hoping lawmakers would ignore what just happened.The White House even sent those GOP talking points to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), her office confirmed ― a day after she announced a formal impeachment inquiry spurred by Trump’s Ukraine call.
In a rambling press conference Wednesday in which he asserted he had done nothing wrong and tried to pivot the focus to Hillary Clinton’s emails, President Donald Trump defended asking the Ukrainian president to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden.“You know there was no pressure,” Trump told reporters of his July 25 call with Volodymyr Zelensky, who joined him for the Wednesday press conference. A summary of the leaders’ call released earlier in the day revealed Trump asked Zelensky to investigate 2020 Democratic presidential contender Biden. Trump made the request while discussing U.S. military aid to Ukraine.
During normal times, Donald Trump’s attempted extortion of the Ukrainian government, aimed at forcing an investigation against one of his chief political opponents would almost immediately become the purview of the attorney general, who would — again, during normal times — appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the allegations. After all, the president attempted to use taxpayer money and the weight of the federal government to force Ukraine’s newly elected president to help Trump’s re-election campaign: This was a flagrant abuse of power, a flagrant attempt at bribery and extortion, and absolutely an indictment- or impeachment-worthy trespass.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Tuesday “we’re going to find out what happened” about a whistleblower’s complaint regarding President Donald Trump and said he expects the Senate Intelligence Committee will conduct a “responsible, rather apolitical, at least bipartisan” probe of the matter.
House Intelligence Committee chairman Rep. Adam Schiff announced Tuesday that the whistleblower who filed a mysterious complaint, which includes allegations about President Donald Trump’s conduct, would like to speak to the committee.
President Donald Trump cycled through a range of conflicting reactions Tuesday as Democrats moved swiftly toward concrete congressional action on impeachment.
The president moved from dismissing the renewed push by Democrats for impeachment proceedings early in the day to bemoaning the effort’s impact while holding meetings with world leaders at the United Nations just a few hours later, to expressing social media outrage over “PRESIDENTIAL HARASSMENT!” as evening fell.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who for months resisted efforts to launch impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump, announced a formal inquiry on Tuesday, saying that the president’s growing Ukraine scandal marked a “breach of his Constitutional responsibilities.”
“This week the president has admitted to asking the president of Ukraine to take actions which would benefit him politically,” Pelosi said.
As House Speaker Nancy Pelosi warns that continued efforts by the Trump administration to block Congress from learning more about a national security whistleblower complaint would take Congress “into a whole new stage of investigation,” congressional Democrats are facing renewed pressure to supporting impeaching President Donald Trump.
President Donald Trump will address the United Nations General Assembly today.
The president’s speech comes amid ongoing tension with Iran and allegations that the president pressured Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son.
As Trump met with world leaders Monday, he hinted Iran will be part of his address. The Middle Eastern Country is being blamed for an attack on two Saudi oil facilities 10 days ago.
Prosecutors from the Manhattan District Attorney’s office want a judge to throw out President Donald Trump’s bid to block them from looking at his personal and corporate tax returns.
The office of Manhattan D.A. Cyrus Vance subpoenaed Trump’s accountants for the returns late last month as part of a criminal investigation into the Trump Organization over hush money payments made to two women who had alleged affairs with the president. Trump has denied the affairs.
Teen environmental activist Greta Thunberg delivered an emotional and scathing speech at the United Nations on Monday, accusing world leaders of stealing her dreams and her childhood with their inaction on climate change.
“I shouldn’t be up here. I should be back at school on the other side of the ocean,” the 16-year-old from Sweden told the United Nations Climate Action Summit. “Yet you all come to us young people for hope. How dare you! You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words.”
Well, Bill Weld, former governor of the Commonwealth (God save it!), really shot the moon to begin the week. Appearing on MSNBC, Weld made it plain. From the Washington Post:
“Talk about pressuring a foreign country to interfere with and control a U.S. election,” Weld said during an appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”
“It couldn’t be clearer, and that’s not just undermining democratic institutions. That is treason. It’s treason, pure and simple, and the penalty for treason under the U.S. code is death. That’s the only penalty…The penalty under the Constitution is removal from office, and that might look like a pretty good alternative to the president if he could work out a plea deal.””
Well, all right, then.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Sunday assailed the Trump administration’s efforts to block a whistleblower complaint involving President Donald Trump’s apparent effort to have Ukraine investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his family.
In a letter to colleagues Sunday, Pelosi said the administration “will be entering a grave new chapter of lawlessness which will take us into a whole new stage of investigation” if acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire fails to provide the complaint when he testifies in front of the House Intelligence Committee on Thursday. The complaint reportedly centers around Trump’s July conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky during which Trump is accused of pressuring Zelensky to investigate Biden’s son Hunter’s role at a Ukrainian energy company.
HBO’s fantasy epic “Game of Thrones” and Amazon’s dark comedy “Fleabag” won top honors at the 71st Primetime Emmy Awards on Sunday, capping off a host-free night that moved briskly and largely shied away from political barbs.
President Donald Trump on Sunday acknowledged that he discussed former Vice President Joe Biden during a July phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, but denied accusations that he is using the power of his office to hurt a major political rival.
“No quid pro quo, there was nothing,” Trump told reporters on the White House South Lawn. “It was a perfect conversation.”
We’re witnessing a political revolution in this country, and the press is missing this monumental shift. It’s not that journalists can’t spot the game-changing story; it’s that they’re too afraid to document it. They’re too bullied to address it forcefully.
In the Donald Trump era, lying has become an unequivocal hallmark of the Republican Party and its political strategy. It now defines the GOP, whose top officials, including the United States attorney general, lie early and often about hugely important issues. The press continues to let them get away with it because the media continues to grapple—in slow motion—with how to deal with a major political party that lies about everything. None of this is normal. But the Beltway press is doing its best to make it so.
Every fucking day they went after President Obama. Every fucking day they looked for the merest hint, some seemingly insignificant spark that they could fan into a full conflagration, some misstep that would give his evil game away. Every fucking day the syphilitic cocks of the right tried to prove that Barack Obama, who was clearly guilty of being president while black, was a Muslim, anti-American traitor out to destroy the good (white) American way of life.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) is demanding that Attorney General William Barr release a whistleblower report that reportedly sounded the alarm on President Donald Trump’s requests for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s help in securing the 2020 election.
“If media reports are correct that President Trump delayed military aid appropriated by Congress in order to get Ukraine to investigate a political opponent, it’s difficult not to see that as an abuse of presidential authority, plain and simple,” Feinstein ― the lead Democrat on the Judiciary Committee ― said in a statement Saturday.
Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren has overtaken former Vice President Joe Biden in Iowa, according to a new Des Moines Register/CNN poll of the crucial state.
The poll out Saturday night found Warren was the top choice for the Democratic nomination with 22 percent support among likely caucus-goers, while Biden had the support of 20 percent of respondents. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders fell to third with 11 percent.
The Department of Homeland Security is sounding the alarm on the growing danger of white supremacy across the country, warning of the internet’s ability to serve as a meeting space and a breeding ground for nationalist extremism.
In a 37-page report called the Strategic Framework for Countering Terrorism and Targeted Violence released Friday, the department emphasized the ease at which potential domestic terrorists can network, drawing a parallel to foreign threats.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio dropped out of the 2020 presidential race Friday, ending a long shot bid for the Democratic nomination that never went anywhere.
“I feel like I have contributed all I can to this primary election. It’s clearly not my time, so I’m going to end my presidential campaign,” de Blasio said in an interview on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”
The Pentagon is fighting against proposals by White House officials to drastically cut the number of refugees allowed into the U.S., and has called for reserving visas for Iraqis who risked their lives working for U..S. troops, according to five people familiar with the plan.
In internal discussions, the Defense Department has expressed opposition to any further reductions to the current annual ceiling of 30,000 for refugee admissions, which already is at a historic low for the 40-year-old U.S. refugee program, the sources told NBC News.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., said Thursday that he believed it was likely that President Donald Trump or his aides were working to keep the details of an urgent complaint by an intelligence community whistleblower from Congress.
“I believe that there is an effort to prevent this information getting to Congress, and if the assertion is accurate that the Department of Justice has made and the DNI has affirmed that this involves a potentially privileged communication, then at one level or another, it likely involves either the president or people around him,” Schiff told reporters following a closed-door briefing with the intelligence community’s inspector general, Michael Atkinson, and the Intelligence Committee’s members that lasted several hours.
Ukraine is at the center of a complaint made by a whistleblowing intelligence officer who filed the report after learning of a promise President Donald Trump made to a foreign leader, The Washington Post reported Thursday evening.
The newspaper cited two people familiar with the matter whom it did not name. The Trump administration has withheld the details of the report from Congress; though it was known that the complaint involved a foreign leader, the Post was the first to report the country involved.
Rudy Giuliani, attorney to President Donald Trump, got into it with CNN’s Chris Cuomo during a raucous interview on Thursday night.
The former New York City mayor shouted at Cuomo, repeatedly contradicted himself, declared Cuomo to be “the enemy” and at one point, placed his head on his hand and closed his eyes, showing off a New York Yankees World Series ring.
We’re witnessing a political revolution in this country, and the press is missing this monumental shift. It’s not that journalists can’t spot the game-changing story; it’s that they’re too afraid to document it. They’re too bullied to address it forcefully.
In the Donald Trump era, lying has become an unequivocal hallmark of the Republican Party and its political strategy. It now defines the GOP, whose top officials, including the United States attorney general, lie early and often about hugely important issues. The press continues to let them get away with it because the media continues to grapple—in slow motion—with how to deal with a major political party that lies about everything. None of this is normal. But the Beltway press is doing its best to make it so.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Wednesday accused Iran of perpetrating an “act of war” after weekend strikes on oil facilities in Saudi Arabia, saying the attack had the “fingerprints of the Ayatollah.”
“This was an Iranian attack,” Pompeo told reporters after a flight to the Saudi Arabian city of Jeddah. “We were blessed there were no Americans killed in this attack, but anytime you have an act of war of this nature, there’s always a risk that could happen.”
New York Times reporters Robin Pogrebin and Kate Kelly said that Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh agreed to let them interview him for their upcoming book ― as long as they would publicly lie about it.
Speaking at the National Press Club in Washington on Wednesday, Kelly and Pogrebin said that Kavanaugh said he would talk to the reporters to provide them with background information as long as they falsely noted in the book that he declined to be interviewed.
The secret whistleblower complaint that the acting director of national intelligence has refused to hand over to Congress involves President Donald Trump’s “communications with a foreign leader,” The Washington Post reported Wednesday, citing two former U.S. officials familiar with the complaint.
The officials said Trump’s interaction with the foreign leader, whose identity was not disclosed, included a “promise” made by the president that was regarded as concerning by the intelligence official who filed a formal whistleblower complaint with the intelligence community inspector general.
John Bolton, President Donald Trump’s fired national security adviser, harshly criticized Trump’s foreign policy on Wednesday at a private lunch, saying that inviting the Taliban to Camp David sent a “terrible signal” and that it was “disrespectful” to the victims of 9/11 because the Taliban had harbored al Qaeda.
Bolton also said that any negotiations with North Korea and Iran were “doomed to failure,” according to two attendees.
Robert Mueller’s report, even in redacted form, reveals how Donald Trump and his inner circle colluded with a foreign power to undermine American democracy. It also shows a president and his allies who were and are willing to obstruct and otherwise interfere with justice in order to remain in power. The Trump regime’s assault on the rule of law and democracy are not means and goals unto themselves. As with other authoritarian regimes, the ultimate goal is to amass more power and money at the expense of the public. Corruption and a lack of ethics are not exceptions in such types of governments. They are the rule.
Among many outcomes and observations following last week’s ABC News/Univision presidential debate, there were only two candidates who were willing to attack Donald Trump and the trolls who surround him: Sen. Kamala Harris and former Rep. Beto O’Rourke. That’s not to say the others didn’t mention President Trump at all. It’s just that Harris and O’Rourke stood out in terms of their unflinching and aggressive attacks against Trump (Harris) and the Republican Party’s destructive fealty to the gun lobby (O’Rourke).
President Donald Trump fired back at Sen. Lindsey Graham after the latter suggested the president showed “weakness” toward Iran for not responding more forcefully when Iran shot down a US surveillance drone in June.
Graham made his comment on Twitter after receiving a briefing from Vice President Mike Pence on the recent, devastating attack on Saudi Arabia’s Abqaiq oil facility, which the administration is claiming was carried out by Iran. The South Carolina Republican, a notorious war hawk and advocate for regime change in Iran, was clearly implying that Iran had been emboldened by Trump’s inaction three months ago.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is heading to Saudi Arabia Tuesday to meet with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman amid the fallout from a drone and missile attack on a major Saudi oil facility over the weekend.
Pompeo has blamed Iran for the attack, although President Trump has been hesitant to do so until a full review has been completed. Mr. Trump said Monday the Iranians were likely behind the attack, but wouldn’t definitively state that was the case.
The Justice Department has filed suit against National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden, seeking to seize any proceeds he makes from his new book, “Permanent Record.”
The suit would not block the publication of Snowden’s book, which came out Tuesday, but rather seeks to prevent him from profiting from it. The suit names the book’s publishers as defendants, which DOJ said was intended only to ensure that no funds were transferred to Snowden while the lawsuit plays out.
President Donald Trump’s administration is expected to announce Wednesday that it will revoke California’s legal authority to set its own auto emissions standards, The New York Times reported Tuesday.
The state has been in an ongoing legal fight with the Trump administration for the last year over its right to that waiver, which has major influence on the manufacturing of all cars sold in the U.S.
Former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski refused to answer basic questions at a House Judiciary Committee hearing on Tuesday.
Democrats on the committee asked Lewandowski simple questions about his interactions with President Donald Trump as part of their probe into the possible impeachment of the president.
With new questions arising about the confirmation process for Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, on Monday defended his committee’s investigation of allegations against the then-nominee, calling it an “incredibly thorough review” into Kavanaugh’s personal and professional life.
Grassley, who oversaw the confirmation process as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee last fall, made the remarks after new allegations arose over the weekend, calling into question the scope and extent of the committee’s work and the FBI’s investigation of Kavanaugh.
President Donald Trump on Monday offered markedly more restrained language about possible retaliation for a weekend attack on a Saudi oil facility — compared to his Sunday tweets that the U.S. was “locked and loaded depending on verification” if and when the U.S. publicly announces Iran’s culpability.
A senior administration official told ABC News that there was an unclassified statement that was cleared and ready to be released, showing no doubt Iran carried out the strikes from its own soil. But the president was restrained in his comments.
President Donald Trump, looking to put New Mexico in play in 2020, sought to win over Hispanic voters at a rally here Monday.
The president’s pitch to Hispanic voters seemed to silo them off from the rest of the electorate, including the rally crowd (“We love our Hispanics.”) It featured an assertion that they had a greater understanding of the source of the drug problem than other Americans. And it included a section in which Trump wondered how CNN contributor Steve Cortes could be Hispanic even though, the president said, he appeared to be of Northern European descent.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, in a speech that drew thousands of supporters to a historic site in Lower Manhattan, on Monday made one of her most explicit appeals to female voters since announcing her bid for the White House.
In Washington Square Park, an area etched with the history of women-led political action against corruption and big business, she sought to cast her own campaign as the next iteration of that movement.
Senator Professor Warren continues to play error-free baseball in this here presidential campaign. Not only does she schedule a certified Big Speech in Washington Square Park in New York on Monday night to talk about the contributions of women to the labor movement not far from the site of the Triangle Shirtwaist fire, but also, in the afternoon, she scoops an important endorsement across town. From The New York Times:
The party endorsed Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont during the last presidential cycle, at which time he described Working Families as “the closest thing” to “my vision of democratic socialism.” The group’s endorsement of Ms. Warren on Monday, one of the few by a prominent progressive organization this early in the primary, is sure to turn heads among left-leaning Democrats who are desperate to defeat the current front-runner, Mr. Biden, in a primary election where their party’s ideological future is at stake.
It started in depressing fashion, but the 2020 election season may have officially begun when a right-wing group aired a vicious attack ad last week against Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York. The spot, which aired on a couple of major-market ABC stations the night of a prime-time Democratic debate, featured Ocasio-Cortez’s image being consumed by fire, followed by a black-and-white image of human skeletons in an apparent reference to Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge genocide in the 1970s.
Saudi Arabia is once again a radioactive political football in the U.S., and President Donald Trump can’t resist grabbing it.
In a series of tweets this weekend, Trump indicated that Iran is behind the recent attack on Saudi oil facilities and that the United States will respond after hearing from the Saudi government “under what terms we would proceed.”
Days before Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh‘s confirmation, a Democratic senator urged the FBI to reach out to a witness who had key information about alleged misconduct by the nominee while at Yale, according to a letter obtained by CNN.
State prosecutors in Manhattan have subpoenaed President Trump’s accounting firm to demand eight years of his personal and corporate tax returns, according to several people with knowledge of the matter.
The subpoena opens a new front in a wide-ranging effort to obtain copies of the president’s tax returns, which Mr. Trump initially said he would make public during the 2016 campaign but has since refused to disclose.
On Dec. 29, 2016, the Obama administration announced that it was giving nearly three dozen Russian diplomats just 72 hours to leave the United States and was seizing two rural East Coast estates owned by the Russian government. As the Russians burned papers and scrambled to pack their bags, the Kremlin protested the treatment of its diplomats, and denied that those compounds — sometimes known as the “dachas” — were anything more than vacation spots for their personnel.
Sometimes it feels like the press has just completely surrendered to Donald Trump’s relentless lies, and that reporters have essentially thrown up their hands, signaling that Trump has complete permission to fabricate whatever wild fantasies he wants and journalists won’t really do much. Perhaps it’s one part laziness, one part exhaustion? But watching what unfolded on Sept. 11, last week really highlighted just how detached from reality Trump is, and how little the press seems to care.
You don’t really need to know why model and TV host Chrissy Teigen called President Donald Trump a “pussy ass bitch.” I mean, you can probably think of a dozen reasons right off the top of your head and nod, saying, “Yeah, that makes sense.” Because, obviously, Donald Trump is a pussy ass bitch. He’s always been a pussy ass bitch. He’ll always be a pussy ass bitch with his pussy ass bitch sons and his pussy ass bitch business.
A weekend drone attack on Saudi Arabia that cut into global energy supplies and halved the kingdom’s oil production threatened Sunday to fuel a regional crisis, as the U.S. released new evidence to back up its allegation that Iran was responsible for the assault amid heightened tensions over Tehran’s collapsing nuclear deal.
Tens of thousands of auto workers across the country went on strike Sunday night after negotiations faltered between their union and General Motors.
The strike began at 11:59 p.m. ET., with as many as 50,000 United Auto Workers at dozens of facilities from Michigan to Texas expected to participate.
Ric Ocasek, a co-founder and lead singer of the new wave band The Cars, was found dead in New York City on Sunday, authorities said. Ocasek was 75.
The New York Police Department said his body was found in a Manhattan townhouse on Sunday afternoon. Ocasek, who was unconscious and unresponsive, was pronounced dead at the scene, authorities said.
Ocasek’s cause of death wasn’t immediately clear, but police said no criminality was suspected.
A slew of prominent Democrats called on Congress to impeach Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh after allegations of sexual misconduct that had once threatened to torpedo his nomination to the bench resurfaced, even as President Donald Trump continued to defend him.
“I sat through those hearings,” Sen. Kamala Harris, a member of the Senate Judiciary Commitee and a Democratic presidential candidate, tweeted on Sunday. “Brett Kavanaugh lied to the U.S. Senate and most importantly to the American people. He was put on the Court through a sham process and his place on the Court is an insult to the pursuit of truth and justice. He must be impeached.”
Felicity Huffman was sentenced to 14 days in jail on Friday for her role in the college admissions cheating scandal. The popular television actress has admitted to paying $15,000 in an effort to boost her eldest daughter’s SAT score.
Huffman, 56, also received one year of probation, 250 hours of community service and a $30,000 fine. Huffman said in a statement that she accepts the “court’s decision without reservation.”
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Thursday criticized a television ad from a new Republican-aligned political action committee that calls her “ignorant” and sets fire to her picture.
Briscoe Cain, a Republican serving in the Texas House of Representatives, is facing a possible FBI investigation over a threatening message he sent to Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke.
“My AR is ready for you Robert Francis,” Cain wrote on Twitter in response to O’Rourke’s proposed assault weapons ban.
The 2020 Democratic presidential primary is in the middle of a slog, and Thursday night’s debate reflected that. The campaign is mature enough that multiple candidates have dropped out of the race but still young enough for the top-polling candidates to bring risk-averse approaches to the debate, limiting the possibilities for fireworks. It was late enough in the cycle for most of the arguments to be familiar to a highly informed voter but perhaps not late enough to qualify as must-see television for the less-engaged.
The Justice Department has rejected an appeal from former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe of a recommendation to indict him made by the US attorney in Washington, DC, sources familiar with the situation say.
The House Judiciary Committee took a big step Thursday morning in its ongoing investigation into whether to recommend the filing of articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump, passing a resolution that set procedures and rules for future impeachment investigation hearings.
The resolution passed along party lines, 24-17.
Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) lashed out at Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) in a tweet on Thursday accusing her fellow Republican of supporting terrorists and referring to him as a “big loser.”
“Hi @RandPaul I know the 2016 race was painful for you since you were such a big loser (then & now) with a dismal 4.5% in Iowa,” tweeted Cheney — who, as House GOP conference chair, holds a top Republican leadership position — in a reference to Paul’s failed 2016 presidential campaign.
Donald Trump is, and has always been, a threat to our democracy. The long rap sheet of crimes perpetrated by this president is getting longer every day; it only starts with special counsel Robert Mueller’s report.
And now Congress has returned from recess to a country that’s reeling from a president who clearly lacks both the competence and temperament for the office he holds. After years of stalling, the House Judiciary Committee is expected to vote on Thursday to expand the existing lines of inquiry into the potential impeachment of Trump.
President Donald Trump said Wednesday that the US Food and Drug Administration would be putting out “some very strong recommendations” regarding the use of flavored e-cigarettes in “a couple of weeks.”
The winnowing presidential primary field is five months out from the first ballots being cast – but Democrats all vying for the top of the ticket are still carving out their own paths to defeat President Donald Trump.
Those differing routes are never more apparent than when standing shoulder-to-shoulder on a debate stage.
“You know, we have a president, as everybody has acknowledged here, every day is ripping at the social fabric of this country, but no one man has the capacity to rip that apart,” former Vice President Joe Biden said in his opening pitch at the second Democratic debate. “It’s too strong. We’re too good … Mr. President, this is America. And we are stronger and great because of this diversity, Mr. President, not in spite of it.”
U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday welcomed China’s decision to exempt some U.S. anti-cancer drugs and other goods from its tariffs and announced a delay to scheduled tariff hikes on billions worth of Chinese goods.
Beijing’s exemptions and Washington’s delay came days ahead of a planned meeting aimed at defusing a trade war between the world’s two largest economies.
The U.S. Supreme Court late Wednesday gave the Trump administration permission to enforce its toughest restriction yet on asylum seekers at the southern border, even though a lawsuit to stop the new policy is still working its way through the lower courts.
As a result, the government can now refuse to consider a request for asylum from anyone who failed to apply for it in another country after leaving home but before coming here. The order means, for instance, that migrants from Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador cannot seek asylum in the U.S. if they didn’t first ask for it in Mexico.
In the moments before President Donald Trump was set to commemorate the 18th anniversary of the September 11 terror attacks, his mind was decidedly elsewhere.
Joe Biden leads the Democratic presidential primary but a tight race for second place has formed behind him as Sen. Elizabeth Warren leads Sen. Bernie Sanders by one point, according to a new CNN poll conducted by SSRS.
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi completely lost it on a reporter for asking whether she regretted not calling the House back from recess to work on gun reform, saying she was “getting very angry about the silliness of these questions” and blaming Mitch McConnell for continued deaths from gun violence.
On Tuesday, San Francisco Chronicle reporter Tal Kopan approached Pelosi on Capitol Hill and asked “Do you have any regrets about not bringing the House back in August to keep the flame lit on gun violence?”
The 10 leading Democratic presidential candidates will take the stage at the party’s third 2020 presidential primary debate in Texas on Thursday.
Unlike the prior debates, the event in Houston will feature all the highest-polling candidates — including Former Vice President Joe Biden, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, California Sen. Kamala Harris and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. — on stage at the same time. In previous debates, the field was split into two groups of 10 and included California Rep. Eric Swalwell, Former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand and Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, who have since dropped out.
Republican Rep.-elect Dan Bishop’s narrow victory in a North Carolina special election had drawn a half-dozen excited tweets from President Donald Trump by early Wednesday morning.
“Dan Bishop was down 17 points 3 weeks ago. He then asked me for help, we changed his strategy together, and he ran a great race,” Trump tweeted. “Big Rally last night.”
Read the rest of the story at NBC News.
As President Donald Trump began losing confidence in national security adviser John Bolton, whom he fired on Tuesday, he reached out to the man he had fired to give Bolton the job: retired Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster.
In phone calls to McMaster — the first of which took place last fall — Trump told his second national security adviser that he missed him, according to two people familiar with the conversations. It’s a sentiment the president has also expressed to White House aides, they said. Trump has solicited McMaster’s advice on various national security challenges, even asking McMaster whom he should nominate to lead the Pentagon, they said.
North Carolina state Sen. Dan Bishop will defeat Democrat Dan McCready in the North Carolina 9th District’s special congressional election, CNN projects, giving Republicans a narrow victory in the GOP-leaning district where President Donald Trump won by 12 points in 2016.
Fox News’ Tucker Carlson has been publicly critical of John Bolton on numerous occasions, so it’s no surprise that he opened his show tonight declaring that his leaving the White House is “great news for America.”
“Especially for the large number of young people who would have been killed in pointless wars if Bolton had stayed on the job,” he said. “They may not be celebrating tonight, but they should be.”
Maya. Joyce. Jill. If you are an avid watcher of MSNBC, you know these women by their first names. They are legal analysts, but I think of them as the Avengers—only talking is their superpower, and right now, for them and their fans, the Zombie Apocalypse is in D.C.
Once relatively obscure, toiling in the trenches of our criminal justice system, these women have become celebrities in their own right, showing up at moments of crisis to help the average Joe and Josephine understand the law. They educate, they entertain, and, in particularly stressful times, they can calm many viewers down. (Just as Fox analysts calm other people down. People who are not me.)
Read the rest of this look at Jill Wine-Banks and Maya Wiley here.
As Donald Trump grows noticeably more desperate, he’s blundering his way into more unforced errors, metaphorically stepping on a series of rakes scattered on the White House lawn. With each careless step onto another rake, he keeps clobbering himself in the face again and again. In particular, Trump appears to be setting a trap for Joe Biden, should the former vice president win the Democratic nomination next year. But it’s a plot that’s already backfiring. After all, my rule remains: Trump always makes things worse for Trump.
Before we dig into the latest harrowing developments on this front, let’s review. Back in May, I wrote about a story originally reported by the New York Times involving Joe Biden, his son Hunter Biden and Ukraine.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s proposed bill to lower prescription drug prices has won qualified praise from some of the progressives who have been most critical of her handling of the issue.
“This is an ambitious plan, as any meaningful response to outrageous prescription drug prices and nationwide treatment rationing must be,” Peter Maybarduk, director of Public Citizen’s Global Access to Medicines Program, said in a statement. “Nevertheless, there are important limits on this plan’s capacity to make medicine affordable.”
Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr. alleged that there is a “criminal conspiracy” against him by former board members at the school, telling Hill.TV that he’s sharing information with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. His comments come after current and former Liberty University officials accused Falwell of alarming conduct in a Politico magazine story, including revealing inappropriate details about his sex life, partying in night clubs, funneling university into real-estate deals, and awarding school contracts to friends.
Six in 10 Americans say President Donald Trump does not deserve to be reelected, according to a new CNN Poll conducted by SSRS, and more now say he’s doing a poor job than a good one of keeping important campaign promises.
President Donald Trump ousted national security adviser John Bolton on Tuesday, saying he and the hawkish aide had “disagreed strongly” on many issues and suggesting that Bolton had collided with other Trump advisers, too.
The decision came after widespread reports that Bolton tried to stop Trump from inviting leaders of the Afghan Taliban to Camp David for peace talks. Trump ultimately scrapped the idea, but multiple people familiar with the issue said the news reports about Bolton’s dissent — believed to have been planted by Bolton aides — infuriated Trump.
President Trump took the stage in North Carolina’s 9th Congressional District on Monday ahead of a special election to throw his support behind Republican candidates Dan Bishop and Greg Murphy, who’s running in the state’s 3rd District.
Bishop will face Democrat Dan McCready on Tuesday in the high-profile special election, which was ordered after widespread absentee ballot fraud was discovered in the 2018 election. The race has become a test case for national Democratic and Republican observers looking for clues to guide their messaging in 2020 campaigns.
The U.S. Air Force has ordered a world-wide review of how it chooses overnight accommodations on long flights following revelations that air crews had occasionally stayed at President Donald Trump’s Scotland resort while refueling at a small commercial airport nearby.
The review comes as additional instances of military personnel staying at Trump properties have been uncovered. The C-17 crew’s overnight stay at Trump’s Turnberry resort in Scotland earlier this year, first reported by POLITICO on Friday, was not an isolated incident.
There was a rank obscenity posted on the electric Twitter machine Sunday night. It was posted by a very sharp reporter named Brian Entin from WSVN in Miami. Entin was on a ferry that was supposed to take Bahamians fleeing the devastation of Hurricane Dorian to Florida. Hundreds of Bahamians have been allowed to come to this country without going through much of the usual folderol at immigration—and without going through much of the the heartless, soulless folderol that has infected the process since the gang at Camp Runamuck took over.
The Secretary of Commerce threatened to fire top employees at NOAA on Friday after the agency’s Birmingham office contradicted President Trump’s claim that Hurricane Dorian might hit Alabama, according to three people familiar with the discussion.
That threat led to an unusual, unsigned statement later that Friday by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration disavowing the office’s own position that Alabama was not at risk. The reversal caused widespread anger within the agency and drew criticism from the scientific community that NOAA, a division of the Commerce Department, had been bent to political purposes.
President Donald Trump’s attorneys would be permitted to review some of Congress’s impeachment-related evidence under a set of procedures unveiled Monday by the House Judiciary Committee, part of a plan to spell out the panel’s authorities as it intensifies its consideration of articles of impeachment.
The measure, obtained by POLITICO, would also allow smaller groups of lawmakers on the Judiciary panel’s subcommittees to consider evidence — a step that could streamline and hasten its review. It would also allow committee staffers for both the Democratic and Republican sides of the panel to question witnesses for an extra hour, part of an effort to elicit more useful information.
The empire begins with a brothel. It stands, sturdy and square, at the heart of a gold-rush boomtown in northwest British Columbia, a monument to careful branding. The windows of the Arctic Restaurant have no signs offering access to prostitutes—even in a lawless Yukon outpost in 1899, decorum rules out such truth in advertising—but Friedrich Trump knows his clientele.
Curtained-off “private boxes” line the wall opposite the bar, inside of which are beds, and women, and scales to weigh gold powder, the preferred method of payment for services rendered. Word of the restaurant’s off-menu accommodations spreads fast. “Respectable women” are advised by The Yukon Sun to avoid the place, as they are “liable to hear that which would be repugnant to their feelings.” But among lonely prospectors, the Arctic is a hit. Before long, Friedrich is boasting, with a hereditary penchant for hyperbole, that his establishment serves more than 3,000 meals a day.
Todd Palin appears to have filed for divorce from former Alaska governor and one-time vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin, his wife of 31 years. In a document filed Friday in Anchorage Superior Court, Todd Palin, 55, asked to dissolve the marriage, citing an “incompatibility of temperament between the parties such that they find it impossible to live together as husband and wife.”
On the Friday before Labor Day, President Trump gathered top advisers in the Situation Room to consider what could be among the profound decisions of his presidency — a peace plan with the Taliban after 18 years of grinding, bloody war in Afghanistan.
The meeting brought to a head a bristling conflict dividing his foreign policy team for months, pitting Secretary of State Mike Pompeo against John R. Bolton, the national security adviser, in a battle for the competing instincts of a president who relishes tough talk but promised to wind down America’s endless wars.
A top official with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration warned staffers last week not to contradict President Donald Trump’s false claims about Hurricane Dorian’s path, according to The Washington Post.
The email obtained by the Post was sent last Sunday, just hours after Trump tweeted that Alabama “would most likely be hit (much) harder than anticipated” by Hurricane Dorian, even though projections at that time showed no such thing.
The U.S. Air Force has ordered a world-wide review of how it chooses overnight accommodations on long flights following revelations that air crews had occasionally stayed at President Donald Trump’s Scotland resort while refueling at a small commercial airport nearby.
The review comes as additional instances of military personnel staying at Trump properties have been uncovered. The C-17 crew’s overnight stay at Trump’s Turnberry resort in Scotland earlier this year, first reported by POLITICO on Friday, was not an isolated incident.
That’s one way to try halt public debate in this country: by threatening mass violence and a bloody people’s revolt in the streets. That’s what conservative media voices, including those on Fox News, have done in recent days. Specifically, the reckless rhetoric has revolved around proposed new gun laws in the wake of America’s latest string of mass shootings. Those are laws that would likely only be enacted if Democrats won the Senate and the White House in 2020.
In a series of tweets Saturday night, President Trump wrote that he called off a secret meeting at Camp David with the Taliban and canceled peace talks. The president wrote that the Taliban “admitted” to an attack in Kabul that “killed one of our great great soldiers” and 11 others.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Friday that the Trump administration has “made a lot of progress in convincing the Taliban to make some commitments that, frankly, we’ve been trying to get out of them for almost two decades now.”
Former Rep. Mark Sanford, R-S.C., said on Sunday that he will run for president, giving President Donald Trump another longshot primary challenger. “I plan to announce that back home this week.,” Sanford told “Fox News Sunday” host Chris Wallace, adding, “But I am here to tell you now that I am going to get in.”
In early Spring of this year, an Air National Guard crew made a routine trip from the U.S. to Kuwait to deliver supplies.
What wasn’t routine was where the crew stopped along the way: President Donald Trump’s Turnberry resort, about 50 miles outside Glasgow, Scotland.
Since April, the House Oversight Committee has been investigating why the crew on the C-17 military transport plane made the unusual stay — both en route to the Middle East and on the way back — at the luxury waterside resort, according to several people familiar with the incident. But they have yet to receive any answers from the Pentagon.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said he would defend funding for a new middle school in his home state of Kentucky after it was selected as one of the military projects the Trump administration will delay in order to fund border wall construction.
The House Judiciary Committee is prepared to vote next week on a resolution laying out the procedures for its investigation now that it is actively considering moving to impeach President Donald Trump, a major step toward formalizing its sweeping probe, according to multiple sources familiar with the effort.
The head of the union that represents federal weather workers said Friday that his members are “shocked, stunned and irate” that the federal agency whose workers they represent put out a statement siding with President Trump in the increasingly bizarre dispute over whether Hurricane Dorian was on track to hit Alabama.
Two congressional committees have opened investigations into Vice President Mike Pence’s trip to the Trump International Golf Links and Hotel in Doonbeg, Ireland, as well as President Trump’s promotion of the Trump National Doral Miami as a U.S. venue to host the G-7 summit. The House Committee on Oversight and Reform and the House Committee on the Judiciary on Friday announced they have requested documents from the president, vice president, and other Trump administration officials over whether the two incidents were possible violations of the Constitution’s Emoluments Clause. Pence stayed in Doonbeg this week during a trip to Dublin—some 180 miles away in County Clare.
Fox News senior White House correspondent John Roberts had just finished his 3 p.m. live shot on Thursday when President Donald Trump beckoned him into the Oval Office.
A weakened Hurricane Dorian was still packing a powerful punch as it skimmed North Carolina’s coast Friday morning, bringing fierce winds and a dangerous storm surge, according to the National Hurricane Center.
Residents were told to shelter in place Thursday while more than a quarter-of-a-million homes and businesses were left without power on the South Carolina coast in the storm’s wake.
Four states are poised to cancel their 2020 GOP presidential primaries and caucuses, a move that would cut off oxygen to Donald Trump’s long-shot primary challengers.
Republican parties in South Carolina, Nevada, Arizona and Kansas are expected to finalize the cancellations in meetings this weekend, according to three GOP officials who are familiar with the plans.
President Donald Trump was the person who doctored a NOAA projection map of Hurricane Dorian to include parts of Alabama, according to an anonymous White House official: “It was Trump.”
According to a new Washington Post report, “Sharpiegate,” as it’s now known, was the direct result of Trump using a marker to draw in an extra bump on a poster of an early NOAA projection of Dorian’s path through the Atlantic Ocean. Trump displayed the altered poster in a Wednesday Oval Office briefing, where he once again tried to defend his inaccurate statements from the previous weekend that warned Alabama would be impacted by the hurricane.
Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg predicted a coming “reckoning” for Republican leaders who promote policies he believes contradict core Christian values.
During an appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Thursday, the South Bend, Indiana, mayor said that, for a party that claims to defend religious values, the GOP’s policies appear to contradict major religions’ teachings about caring for others.
How fucking pathetic is this: Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and his mass murder-enablers in the GOP caucus are refusing to do anything to tighten gun laws, including things that are supported by between 60 and 90% of Americans. McConnell is taking the bitch way out by saying that he won’t bring to the floor anything that Donald Trump won’t sign. But the NRA keeps fisting McConnell with a clenched hand filled with cash, so as long as they hit that prostate just right, the saggy-faced motherfucker won’t budge.
A top Senate Democrat wants to investigate whether Vice President Mike Pence’s taxpayer-funded stay at a golf club in Ireland owned by President Donald Trump was another “apparent conflict of interest” involving Trump, his administration and his business properties. “Citing security and logistical concerns, you and your Chief of Staff have made the claim that staying at President Trump’s resort in Doonbeg was necessary. I find it hard to believe that your office was unable to identify lodgings that could accommodate the security and logistical needs of your trip in the capital of Ireland, which houses among other locations the United States Embassy – where President Reagan stayed during his 1984 visit,” Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.), the top Democrat on the Senate Homeland Security Committee, wrote in a letter to Pence Thursday.
In the interest of big-picturing the past week or so, we learned from the Republican-controlled Senate Intelligence Committee that Russian hackers successfully infiltrated election systems in all 50 states during the 2016 election cycle. We also learned that the accused felon who was installed as commander in chief as a likely consequence of that cyber-attack spent all weekend blurting racist gibberish on Twitter while cable-news talking heads wonder how it will play among the Midwestern diner crowd. Meanwhile, the Republican Senate majority leader refuses to pass any legislation safeguarding future elections. Read the rest of Bob Cesca’s piece at Salon.
Dude. Just take the L.
That sums up much of the reaction to President Donald Trump’s latest tweets — in which he, astonishingly, continues to defend his tweet from last Sunday claiming Alabama would be hit by Hurricane Dorian.
“Just as I said, Alabama was originally projected to be hit,” Trump wrote on Thursday afternoon. “The Fake News denies it!”
The Pentagon’s announcement that it will divert $3.6 billion in military construction funds to help fund President Donald Trump’s border wall has sparked bipartisan anger from lawmakers who learned Wednesday that their states will be impacted by the decision. Domestically, just under $1.8 billion is being shifted away from projects in 23 states and three US territories. Read the rest of the story at CNN.
At CNN’s seven-hour marathon climate crisis town hall Wednesday, the top 10 candidates for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination united on calls to recommit to the Paris climate accord, end subsidies to oil, gas and coal companies, and halt fossil fuel leasing on public lands. Read the rest of the story at HuffPost.
As with many stories about President Donald Trump, this one may toss you into a familiar cycle: first you laugh, then you cry, and then you fantasize about November 2020. The president’s latest round of nonsense began on Sunday when he announced on Twitter that, among other southern states, Alabama “will most likely be hit (much) harder than anticipated” by Hurrican Dorian, which was making its way toward the East Coast. Read the rest of the story at Raw Story.
Migrant children who were separated from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border last year suffered post-traumatic stress and other serious mental health problems, according to a government watchdog report Wednesday. The chaotic reunification process only added to their ordeal. The Associated Press obtained a copy of the report in advance of the official release. Read the rest of the story at HuffPost.
While warning of Hurricane Dorian, President Donald Trump today displayed a NOAA map that appeared to be doctored to line up with his proclamation that Hurricane Dorian could hit Alabama. Read the rest of the story at Mediaite.
Conservative operative Jacob Wohl is wanted on a felony arrest warrant in California, a development that could hamper his spree of bizarre, blundering political schemes. Wohl and former business partner Matthew Johnson were both charged with the unlawful sale of securities in a Riverside Superior Court criminal complaint filed on Aug. 19. Wohl has not been arrested yet on the charge, according to the court docket. Prosecutors recommended $5,000 bonds for both Wohl and Johnson. Read the rest of the story at The Daily Beast.
CNN reports that in one of Kelly’s last meetings with Trump before leaving the administration, the president asked him if he intends to write a book someday. Sources say that Kelly told Trump he did plan on writing a memoir, but would wait until Trump was no long president before he publishes. Read the rest of the story at Mediaite.
Fox News host Jeanine Pirro slammed her employers and complained about the network suspending her during a Tuesday appearance on former White House aide Seb Gorka’s show. While talking over a commercial break that was broadcasted on Gorka’s YouTube livestream, Pirro told the host that she may not be able to appear on his Salem Radio program in-person due to Fox News barring her from a number of conservative outlets, saying, “Fox reviews everything. They’re unbelievable.” Read the rest of the story at Mediaite.
Britain may have to wait to leave the European Union. Prime Minister Boris Johnson lost a key vote in the House of Commons on Tuesday after lawmakers used an obscure procedural motion to wrest control of the parliamentary agenda from the government in an extraordinary bid to stop a “no deal” Brexit. Read the rest of the story at NBC News.
Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot ripped Senator Ted Cruz and “coward Republicans” after he cited the city as an example for why “gun control doesn’t work.” On Monday, Cruz linked to a story from the far-right website Breitbart News about fatal gun violence in “Democrat-controlled Chicago” over Labor Day Weekend. Read the rest of the story at NBC News.
Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper agreed on Tuesday to free up $3.6 billion from the Pentagon budget for President Trump’s border wall by effectively defunding 127 military construction projects using emergency authorities. Read the rest of the story at The Washington Post.
Walmart said Tuesday that it would discontinue the sale of ammunition used in high-capacity magazines and military-style weapons and also asked its customers not to openly carry firearms in stores even in states where it is permitted. The news follows mass shootings across the country, including 22 people who were killed last month in a Walmart and the surrounding area in El Paso, Texas. Read the rest of the story at NBC News.
President Trump’s political allies are trying to raise at least $2 million to investigate reporters and editors of The New York Times, The Washington Post and other outlets, according to a three-page fundraising pitch reviewed by Axios. Read the rest of the story at Axios.
Former Defense Secretary James Mattis, who has declined numerous opportunities to criticize President Donald Trump’s policies since leaving his Cabinet post, said Tuesday he may not stay silent forever. In a conversation with Council on Foreign Relations President Richard Haass, Mattis said that “when the time’s right to speak out about policy or strategy, I’ll speak out.” Mattis stepped down in December. His letter of resignation cited his disagreements on policy grounds with the president, explaining his “core belief” that “our strength as a nation is inextricably linked to the strength of our unique and comprehensive system of alliances and partnerships.” Read the rest of the story at CNBC.
Congressional Democrats plan to open an inquiry into claims that President Donald Trump was involved in hush money payments to two women during the 2016 election, according to a report Monday evening in The Washington Post. Read the rest of the story at HuffPost.
Thirty-three people had signed up to spend what promised to be a glorious Labor Day weekend aboard the Conception, a 75-foot boat that offered a scuba diver’s dream: unlimited diving among giant fish and colorful underwater sea life, with gourmet meals served between dives. The destination was San Miquel, in California’s Channel Islands, where huge halibut and other fish abound, and September is the perfect time to visit, because of swells and strong winds at other times of the year, trip organizers said in their promotion of the $665 weekend. But on the last part of the trip, the ship caught fire off of Santa Cruz Island, and it was fully ablaze by 3:30 a.m. Monday, said Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill Brown. Read the rest of the story at CNN.
Hurricane Dorian has been downgraded to a Category 3 storm after stalling over the Bahamas, where officials say it is responsible for the deaths of at least five people. The National Hurricane Center says the storm is expected to remain over the Bahamas for much of Tuesday before moving “dangerously close” to the Florida coast through Wednesday night, where it is not expected to make landfall. Read the rest of the story at The Daily Beast.
A west Texas man, on a “downward spiral,” made “rambling” calls to police and the FBI before embarking on a shooting spree that took the lives of seven innocent bystanders, authorities said Monday. The killer, 36-year-old Seth Ator, had been fired by his employer, Journey Oil Field Services, on Saturday before he went on his bloody rampage in the neighboring cities of Odessa and Midland, Texas. Read the rest of the story at NBC News.
The Beltway press has spent years normalizing many things about Donald Trump’s radical presidency. Now it seems to be normalizing Trump’s disastrous polling numbers on the eve of his re-election run. Any other incumbent in his lowly polling position would likely be getting hammered by the pundit class as it dubbed his presidency a failure. But not Trump. Read the rest of Eric Boehlert’s piece at Daily Kos.
At my college, the semester just started. And in my classes, as usual, I have an array of students from other countries, including Syria and Lebanon. I have said on other occasions that my Middle Eastern students are almost always some of the best, hardest-working, least-complaining ones. It’s just an anecdotal observation based on years of experience, but make of that what you will. Read the rest of The Rude Pundit’s piece at his blog.
The Odessa mass shooter threatened his neighbor with a rifle last month, but the police never responded after she reported the incident to them, according to breaking news via CNN. According to the CNN report, the 36-year-old perpetrator, who shot and killed seven people and wounded 22 more on Saturday afternoon, was reported to law enforcement after he threatened his neighbor with a rifle when she left her trash in a nearby dumpster. The neighbor also told CNN that the man would occasionally shoot and kill animals at night on his property from a structure on top of his house and then retrieve the dead animals. Read the rest of the story at Mediaite.
The mayor of Odessa, Texas, on Sunday blamed the mass shooting in his town that claimed seven lives on “evil people” and “violent video games.” When MSNBC news host Kendis Gibson asked Mayor David Turner how he was going to comfort the people of his town, Turner responded: “You comfort your city with prayer. We’re having a prayer vigil tonight … we will handle this one day at a time.” Read the rest of the story at HuffPost.
Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said Saturday she’s “alive” and on her way to being “very well” following radiation treatment for cancer. Ginsburg, 86, made the comments at the Library of Congress National Book Festival in Washington. The event came a little over a week after Ginsburg disclosed that she had completed three weeks of outpatient radiation therapy for a cancerous tumor on her pancreas and is now disease-free. Read the rest of the story at NBC News.
It just became 15% more expensive for U.S. companies to import everything from milk to diapers and sports equipment from China. Tariffs on $112 billion of Chinese goods went into effect Sunday. While some duties have been delayed and some items have been removed from the original list of $300 billion Chinese imports, many everyday grocery items and household staples will still be targeted beginning Sunday, according to an official list that spans 122 pages. Read the rest of the story at NBC News.
Hurricane Dorian strengthened to a “catastrophic” Category 5 storm early Sunday as it closed in on the Bahamas, the National Hurricane Center said. It’s expected to bring devastating 160 mph winds, heavy rainfall and life-threatening storm surge as it prepares to hit the Abaco Islands in the northern Bahamas. It will then hit Grand Bahama Island later on Sunday. Read the rest of the story at NBC News.
Seven people were killed and scores more were wounded—including three police officers and a 17-month-old child shot in the face—when a man armed with a rifle carried out a terrifying rampage in west Texas on Saturday afternoon. After opening fire on state troopers during a traffic stop on Interstate 20 between Odessa and Midland, the suspect went on to randomly shoot other victims and hijack a postal van before being gunned down by police near a movie theater. Read the rest of the story at The Daily Beast.
Recently, I have become intrigued by President Benjamin Harrison. I am, as has been said by editors and friends, very easily intrigued. I fell into this most recent interest when, while backgrounding myself on tariffs, I learned that President Harrison had as pets two possums. One was named Mr. Reciprocity and the other was named Mr. Protection. This seems a lot of effort to make sure you get your message out but, what the hell, both of them probably understood tariffs better than the current occupant of Harrison’s old job. Read the rest of Charlie Pierce’s piece at Esquire.
President Donald Trump on Thursday welcomed parts of a report by the Justice Department’s inspector general that concluded former FBI Director James Comey had violated FBI policies in his handling of certain memos regarding his interactions with the president. Read the rest of the story at HuffPost.
President Trump’s personal assistant, Madeleine Westerhout, whose office sits in front of the Oval Office and who has served as the president’s gatekeeper since Day 1 of his administration, resigned on Thursday, two people familiar with her exit said. Read the rest of the story at The New York Times.
A federal judge on Thursday rejected House Democrats’ bid for quick consideration of their lawsuit seeking President Donald Trump’s tax returns. D.C. District Court Judge Trevor McFadden denied their request to both expedite consideration of the case and to decide on its merits without holding a trial. Read the rest of the story at Politico.
Hurricane Dorian is days away from crashing ashore in Florida, and forecasters are warning it’s getting stronger and could grow into a monster storm by landfall. Dorian was moving over the Atlantic as a Category 2 storm early Friday with sustained winds of 105 mph. By evening, it is forecast to strengthen to a Category 3 storm before heading to the Bahamas on Sunday. Read the rest of the story at CNN.
Beto O’Rourke’s presidential campaign made some news this week when it evicted Breitbart News’ Joel Pollack from a private event. The right-wing site with white nationalist loyalties hyped the kerfuffle as an attack on the free press, claiming Pollack is a news reporter. And lots of Beltway journalists rushed to the defense of the GOP propaganda outlet, insisting that the Democrat had crossed a dangerous line. Read the rest of Eric Boehlert’s piece at DailyKos.
In his first interview since resigning from office, former Defense Secretary Mattis appeared reluctant to directly criticize the president, but when he was asked about Trump’s tweets about North Korea he said: “Any Marine general or any other senior servant of the people of the United States would find that, to use a mild euphemism, counterproductive and beneath the dignity of the presidency.” Read the rest of the story at The Daily Beast.
Deutsche Bank revealed to a federal court this week that it may have copies of President Donald Trump’s tax returns that it could hand over to congressional Democrats in response to their subpoena. Whether the bank obeys the subpoena will be up to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit, and possibly the Supreme Court. Read the rest of the story at HuffPost.
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, of New York, dropped out of the race for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination Wednesday afternoon. Read the story at CNN.
President Donald Trump sent Fox News a message Wednesday that he would not tolerate watching hosts on his favorite TV network go easy on Democrats. The president threw a tantrum on Twitter after Fox News anchor Sandra Smith hosted Democratic National Committee communications director Xochitl Hinojosa to discuss ― amicably ― the 2020 Democratic presidential debates. Read the rest of the story at HuffPost.
Only 10 candidates qualified by the Aug. 28 deadline, which means ― unless ABC News suddenly reverses itself ― the candidates who will participate in the Sept. 12 event are:
Former Vice President Joe Biden
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.)
Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.)
South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg
Former Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-Texas)
Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.)
Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.)
Entrepreneur Andrew Yang
Former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Julián Castro
Those who failed to qualify include:
Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.)
Montana Gov. Steve Bullock (D)
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio (D)
Former Rep. John Delaney (D-Md.)
Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii)
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.)
Miramar, Florida, Mayor Wayne Messam (D)
Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio)
Former Rep. Joe Sestak (D-Pa.)
Hedge fund manager Tom Steyer (D)
Author Marianne Williamson
Queen Elizabethas approved Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s plan to suspend Parliament days after members of the body return to work. After a meeting of the privy council at the queen’s holiday home at Balmoral Castle in Scotland, the monarch backed Johnson’s request for Parliament to be “prorogued” between Sept. 9 and Oct. 14. The government has said suspending Parliament will make way for Johnson’s new administration to hold a Queen’s Speech ― laying out the government’s future plans ― on Oct. 14. Read the rest of the story at HuffPost.
Last night on MSNBC, Lawrence O’Donnell shared a report that Russian oligarchs co-signed loans President Donald Trump obtained. It was very thinly sourced and even as he broke the report O’Donnell himself placed an “if true” on it. O’Donnell and MSNBC have since been roundly criticized on how this made it to air in the first place when NBC News did not verify the reporting, and Trump’s attorney sent NBCUniversal a letter threatening legal action. This afternoon O’Donnell took to Twitter to admit “I was wrong to discuss it on the air” when it “didn’t go through our rigorous verification and standards process” He calls it an “error in judgment” and will be addressing it on his MSNBC program tonight. Read the rest of the story at Mediaite.
MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell reported news Tuesday night that, if it proves to be true, could have a significant impact on current presidency of Donald Trump and Congressional investigations into Trump’s finances and his possibly compromised relationship with Russia. Read the rest of the story at Mediaite.
Back in the middle 1990s, HBO premiered one of the great sketch shows of our time. “Mr. Show with Bob and David” was hosted by Bob Odenkirk and David Cross, and one of the most memorable sketches was one in which President Guy “Whitey” Corngood decides to literally blow up the Moon. “And we’ll be doing it during a full moon so we make sure we get it all,” Odenkirk’s NASA character added.
Today, reality — or Donald Trump’s twisted, bastardized version of reality — has exceeded any previous efforts at satirizing the ludicrousness of American politics. We could literally sit here for hours listing the thousands of Trump things, but the perfect illustration of this phenomenon dropped in our laps late Sunday. Read the rest of Bob Cesca’s piece at Salon.
With Puerto Rico under a hurricane watch on Tuesday, President Trump complained about “yet another big storm” heading toward the U.S. territory and lamented how much aid Congress had previously allocated for recovery efforts there, using an inflated figure. “Wow! Yet another big storm heading to Puerto Rico. Will it ever end?” the president wrote on Twitter. “Congress approved 92 Billion Dollars for Puerto Rico last year, an all time record of its kind for ‘anywhere.’” Read the rest of the story at The Washington Post.
President Donald Trump is obsessed with completing 500 miles of border wall before the 2020 election and has embarked on a frantic push to build it, which includes directives to simply “take the land” and promises of “don’t worry, I’ll pardon you” if his aides overstep the law. Read the rest of the story at Mediaite.
Attorney General William Barr is planning a holiday bash at his boss’ hotel in downtown Washington. The party at the Trump International Hotel, Washington, DC, could wind up costing more than $30,000, according to The Washington Post, which first reported on the party and its details. A Justice Department official told CNN that the party is not an official Justice Department event and will be paid out of Barr’s pocket. Read the rest of the story at CNN.
Deutsche Bank said Tuesday that it possesses tax returns tied to President Donald Trump — the latest development in the effort by House Democrats to obtain the president’s financial information. In a court filing related to subpoenas from two House committees, Deutsche Bank said it possessed tax returns — which may be related to Trump, his immediate family or their company, the Trump Organization — that it would have to hand over if it complied with the subpoenas. Read the rest of the story at NBC News.
There’s a new feelgood summer movie just released: Cotton Comes To Denmark.
Over at Talking Points Memo, Summer Concepcion points us to this account from talkbusiness.net
Joe Walsh, a former Republican congressman who’s gone from fierce Trump supporter to perhaps equally fierce Trump critic, is running for president. Walsh announced on ABC this morning, “I’m gonna run for president… We’ve got a guy in the White House who is unfit, completely unfit to be president and it stuns me that nobody stepped up.” Read the rest of the story at Mediaite.
President Donald Trump said Monday that he is “possibly” looking at hosting the next G7 summit at his Trump National Doral Miami Golf Resort. The US is next up to host the G7 in 2020. Trump said while he hasn’t made a final decision on where to host the summit, officials “haven’t found anything that’s even close to competing with it.” Read the rest of the story at CNN.
President Donald Trump has floated multiple times the idea of thwarting hurricanes headed for the US by bombing them, including by dropping nuclear bombs on hurricanes to disrupt their course, Axios reported Sunday, citing conversations with sources who heard Trump’s comments and were briefed on a National Security Council memo that recorded the comments. Read the rest of the story at CNN.
President Donald Trump claimed on Monday that Chinese officials are prepared to return to the negotiating table, signaling there may be a path to a potential détente in his tit-for-tat trade war with Beijing. Read the rest of the story at Politico.
The Amazon rainforest is on fire. The Arctic, along with parts of Alaska, Siberia, and British Columbia, have burned this summer or are continuing to burn. The conflagrations destroying the forests of the northernmost parts of the world are a result of the effects of climate change. While climate change has made fires more likely, the Amazon blazes are directly caused by the fuckery of humans, allowed by the savage, shitty president of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro. Read the rest of The Rude Pundit’s piece at his blog.
Folding like a cheap suit, Donald Trump once again signaled that he’s going to stand in the way of any kind of gun reform legislation in the wake of two more massacres that left 31 people dead and dozens more injured. Trump lying about gun laws and brazenly walking back his public pledges for action was completely predictable. You can set your clocks to this stuff. Read the rest of Eric Boehlert’s piece at DailyKos.
Former White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders will join Fox News as a contributor, the company disclosed on Thursday. She’ll make her first appearance on the Sept. 6 airing of “Fox & Friends,” a show that President Donald Trump favors and to whom he has given a rare interview from time to time. Read the rest of the story at HuffPost.
Hours after stepping down as the chief executive of online retail giant Overstock.com over his tryst with Russian spy Maria Butina and what he described as his role in a “deep state” government plot, Patrick Byrne appeared on Fox Business Network on Thursday to ostensibly make sense of both his baffling claims and his resignation. He made sense of neither. Read the rest of the story and see the video at The Daily Beast.
An email sent from the Justice Department to all immigration court employees this week included a link to an article posted on a white nationalist website that “directly attacks sitting immigration judges with racial and ethnically tinged slurs,” according to a letter sent by an immigration judges union and obtained by BuzzFeed News. Read the rest of the story at BuzzFeed News.
Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro took power this year promising to open the Amazon rainforest to industry, roll back environmental and indigenous protections and stack his Cabinet with ideologues who dismiss climate change as a Marxist hoax.
But the record wildfires now raging in the Amazon offer a terrifying rebuke and serve as a stark reminder of what’s at stake as Bolsonaro’s policies allow ranchers, loggers and miners to destroy the world’s largest forest and repository of carbon dioxide at an unprecedented pace. Read the rest of the story at HuffPost.
There’s been a change in President Donald Trump. He used to say he had accomplished more than any other President, a debatable claim. But now he’s using messianic language about himself. “I’m the chosen one,” he said Wednesday about what he claims is a singular, and still only hoped-for, trade deal with China. Read the rest of the story at CNN.
President Donald Trump on Wednesday adopted a religious theme in describing his role in picking a trade fight with China, saying: “I am the chosen one.” The president turned to look at the sky as he made the claim, using language that some Christians might consider offensive, because in Christian theology Jesus Christ is the “chosen one” and the savior. Read the rest of the story at Politico.
Washington Gov. Jay Inslee is dropping out of the 2020 Democratic presidential race, he announced Wednesday night on MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show.” Inslee plans to send an email to supporters on Thursday announcing that he will run for a third term as governor, two sources close to Inslee told NBC News on condition of anonymity. Read the rest of the story at NBC News.
President Donald Trump insisted Wednesday that he doesn’t want another tax cut, a day after the White House signaled that the economy could use a little help. “I am not looking at a tax cut now,” the president told reporters in a reversal. “We don’t need it because we have a strong economy.” Trump and his administration signaled through news reports earlier this week that they might favor a payroll tax cut as a way of strengthening the economy. Some economists think a recession could be around the corner. Read the rest of the story at HuffPost.
President Donald Trump says he is looking “very seriously” at altering a constitutional right to citizenship at birth. The president made his remarks during a press gaggle during which he also called himself “the chosen one” as he looked up at the sky. Those remarks came just hours after he tweeted praise calling him “the second coming of God” and “the King of Israel.” “We’re looking at birthright citizenship very seriously,” Trump told reporters. Birthright citizenship is mandated by the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Also known as Jus soli, it dates back to English common law. Read the rest of the story at Raw Story.
A brand new Fox News poll shows Donald Trump well behind the top four Democratic candidates for president, with Joe Biden topping the list at 12 points ahead of Trump. Don’t get happy, though, or else we “tempt the wrath of whatever from high atop the thing,” to quote “The West Wing.” We’re still a long way from the 2020 election and roughly a gazillion things could dramatically alter the landscape of the campaign. Read the rest of Bob Cesca’s piece at Salon.
President Donald Trump reportedly privately reassured National Rifle Association boss Wayne LaPierre that he would not pursue increased background check measures for firearms amid rising mass shooting concerns. Read the rest of the story at Mediaite.
President Donald Trump said on Tuesday he was weighing a payroll tax cut — an idea his advisers had insisted was not under consideration, given its potential to signal administration concern about a weakening economy. “It is something that I’m thinking about,” he told reporters at the White House. Read the rest of the story at NBC News.
President Donald Trump is calling off an upcoming trip to Denmark after its prime minister rebuffed his interest in buying Greenland, a Danish territory, the White House announced on Tuesday. “Denmark is a very special country with incredible people, but based on Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen’s comments, that she would have no interest in discussing the purchase of Greenland, I will be postponing our meeting scheduled in two weeks for another time,” Trump tweeted. Read the rest of the story at NBC News.
President Donald Trump on Tuesday told reporters that “any Jewish people that vote for a Democrat” are either uninformed or show “great disloyalty.” Trump made the comments after he was asked about Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar’s suggestion that the U.S. might want to reconsider how much it pays Israel in aid after she and Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., were barred from entering the country last week. Read the rest of the story at NBC News.
Jeffrey Epstein signed a will two days before he apparently hanged himself in a federal jail in New York City. The will, filed in the U.S. Virgin Islands and obtained by CBS News, showed that Epstein was worth more than $577 million. Read the rest of the story at CBS News.
Hillary Clinton swatted back at President Donald Trump’s attempts to spread another conspiracy related to her popular-vote victory in the 2016 presidential election, this time claiming it was due to a search engine manipulation. Read the rest of the story at Politico.
