Month: May 2017

A fountain of lies on the Sunday shows

by digby

I wrote about yesterday’s lie-fest for Salon this morning:

The Republicans were very, very happy last week when they finally got their Trumpcare bill through the House by one vote. The political establishment’s favorite Republican, House Speaker Paul Ryan, got to take a long-awaited curtain call as even his normally hostile right-wing colleagues gave him an ovation. Then House Republicans hopped on party buses for the short trip to the White House, where they all patted one another on the back and basked in the unprecedented unpopularity of their leader, Donald Trump, as he congratulated them on fulfilling their promise to make America sick again.

It’s unclear exactly why this should have been such a heavy lift. Just a little over a year ago, President Barack Obama vetoed a bill to repeal the Affordable Care Act that had sailed through both houses of Congress. Why, you might almost think Republicans weren’t actually serious about that one, or they would have simply passed it again and sent it to Trump’s desk to be signed into law. The fact that they didn’t do that perfectly illustrates the point that all the hand-wringing over Obamacare was political posturing. Once given the power to repeal it, the GOP has had to face up to the fact that it would be ruining millions of people’s lives and destroying families’ financial security for the sake of massive tax cuts.

In the end, party leaders felt it was worth it — at least in the House. Now all eyes turn to the Senate, which, for some unknown reason, everyone seems to think will save the day. But as HuffPost’s Jonathan Cohn pointed out on MSNBC on Sunday, it’s possible that the House has set the bar so low with its cruel and dishonest bill that any improvement (say, reducing the number of people thrown off their health insurance from 24 million to 15 million) will be considered an act of great empathy, and everyone will applaud the great work of the senior statesmen of the Senate.

Some of the, shall we say, dimmer lights in the GOP have already tripped themselves up drinking the deadly poison before they understood what was in the cup. Wisconsin’s Gov. Scott Walker, the once and future Great White Bread Hope of the Republican Party, blurted out that he would consider applying for the waiver granting him the right to allow insurers to discriminate on the basis of pre-existing conditions. He claimed that everyone had really liked the “high risk pools,” before Obamacare ruined everything by making it so everyone was treated equally. There was an immediate outcry from his constituents and he later clarified that he wasn’t “looking to change” policies for people with pre-existing conditions, which almost certainly laid no one’s concerns to rest.

Later, Walker got into a spat with a county executive who had the nerve to ask him about health care at a tourism event, which had the governor hopping mad:

If the reaction of Republican leaders on the Sunday morning talk shows is any indication, the official plan is simply to lie about what’s in the bill and hope nobody finds out.

The House failed to let the Congressional Budget Office score the Trumpcare bill before representatives voted, but Speaker Ryan insisted on ABC News’ “This Week” that any mention of that fact was “a bogus attack from the left,” since the CBO had scored the bill that failed last month and only “three pages” of changes were made. Needless to say, those three pages contained all the pernicious additions the right-wingers of the House Freedom Caucus demanded and received in order for the bill to be passed.

Ryan went further and claimed that “under this bill, no matter what, you cannot be denied coverage if you have a pre-existing condition.” He forgot to mention that it could cost as much as taxpayers lay out weekly to send Trump to make personal appearances at his for-profit golf resorts. (I’m only slightly exaggerating. The costs for people with pre-existing conditions in certain situations will skyrocket. It’s unlikely to match the millions Trump has already charged the taxpayers to fund his weekend promotional trips on behalf of the Trump Organization.)

In reality, the costs and consequences for people with pre-existing conditions will be much greater than what was described in the original CBO report. Destroying that guarantee was one of the Freedom Caucus’ fundamental demands, and it received it. The $8 billion Band-Aid called the Upton amendment will do little to pay for what most experts believe is at least a $200 billion expense.

But for all his dishonest spin, Ryan was pretty much George Washington copping to having chopped the cherry tree as compared with Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price’s act. He appeared on a number of shows on Sunday and was a gushing fountain of disinformation, distortion and misdirection. Like Ryan, Price insisted that people with pre-existing conditions will be just fine. He also ludicrously asserted that the goal of Trumpcare is to “make certain that every single person has health coverage.”

On CNN he responded to Jake Tapper’s question about whether the $880 billion in Medicaid cuts will result in loss of health care with some incomprehensible nonsense about how everyone will be covered because the new plan is “more responsive” — whatever that means. On NBC News’ “Meet the Press” he fatuously argued that many people are still uncovered by insurance with the ACA and Trumpcare would cover them all.

Nothing could be further from the truth. The Congressional Budget Office and every nonpartisan analysis has made clear that this grotesque parody of a health care plan will actually result in tens of millions of people losing coverage, from both the cuts to Medicaid and the subsidies. Others will simply be priced out of the market entirely.

These GOP leaders know this. Their frantic pirouettes around the facts and the numbers proves it. They are simply driven to deliver for their true constituents: corporations and wealthy individuals who will see an $800 billion windfall in tax cuts. And if some of their true believers feel the effects, Republicans obviously figure they can blame this all on the fact that Obamacare was so terrible that it couldn’t possibly be corrected all in one go. If I were a cynical person, I might even suspect that they were planning to go back next year to “fix it” with more tax cuts.

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Cheers everybody!

by digby

IT IS TWO AND A HALF MINUTES TO MIDNIGHT

For the last two years, the minute hand of the Doomsday Clock stayed set at three minutes before the hour, the closest it had been to midnight since the early 1980s. In its two most recent annual announcements on the Clock, the Science and Security Board warned: “The probability of global catastrophe is very high, and the actions needed to reduce the risks of disaster must be taken very soon.” In 2017, we find the danger to be even greater, the need for action more urgent. It is two and a half minutes to midnight, the Clock is ticking, global danger looms. Wise public officials should act immediately, guiding humanity away from the brink. If they do not, wise citizens must step forward and lead the way. See the full statement from the Science and Security Board on the 2017 time of the Doomsday Clock.

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Sally Yates to testify
by Tom Sullivan

Have the popcorn ready. Former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates will testify on Russian interference in the 2016 election before a Senate subcommittee hearing today at 2:30 p.m. EDT. Her testimony before the Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism hearing is to be streamed live here and should be up at C-SPAN.

Business Insider:

Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper will also testify before the subcommittee, which is chaired by Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham — a Russia hawk who has said that Flynn’s request for immunity in exchange for testifying before the congressional intelligence committees about his Russia ties is “a bit bizarre.”

“He’s said in the past nobody asks for immunity unless they have committed a crime. I’m not so sure that’s true — as a lawyer I know that always that is not true. But the whole situation is really strange,” Graham told CNN last month.

Fired in January after 10 days in the position, Yates refused to defend President Trump’s ban on travel to the U.S. from seven Muslim-majority countries. Yates will likely contradict the administration’s account of the firing of former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn. The White House sought to delay her testimony for over a month and attempted to limit topics on which Yates could testify. The Washington Post reported that letters from the Department of Justice argued many topics “off-limits in a congressional hearing because the topics are covered by attorney-client privilege or the presidential communication privilege.”

Yates is expected to testify that she warned the White House that Flynn’s contact with Russia’s ambassador to the US, Sergey Kislyak, made him a security risk:

Lawmakers want to question Yates about her conversation in January with White House counsel Donald McGahn regarding former national security adviser Michael Flynn. People familiar with that conversation say she went to the White House days after the inauguration to tell officials that statements made by Vice President Pence and others about Flynn’s discussions with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak were wrong, and to warn them that those contradictions could expose Flynn or others to potential manipulation by the Russians.

Yates’s testimony Monday is expected to contradict public statements made by White House press secretary Sean Spicer and White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, who described the Yates-McGahn meeting as less of a warning and more of a “heads up’’ about an issue involving Flynn.

Trump dismissed Flynn only after the Washington Post reported that he had misled Vice President Mike Pence about his phone calls with Kislyak.

Meanwhile, Trump is reportedly telling White House staff to lay off Flynn after an Axios report that officials were actively trying to put distance between Trump and Flynn. Anonymous administration officials are telling reporters:

• Flynn’s only priority was getting the president on board with his agenda.
• The White House and the national security process is infinitely more synchronized and functional without him. He isn’t missed.
• Flynn pushed his own points of view — selectively presenting information to Trump in ways favorable to his own positions — rather than serving as an honest broker as national security advisors should.
• His lawyer’s statement that Flynn “certainly has a story to tell” and that he’d only tell it if granted immunity, looked “desperate,” according to a senior administration official. (Harvard Law professor Alex Whiting made the same case back in March in a post on the site Just Security that’s well worth a read.)

But Yates also has a target on her back. Trump took to Twitter yesterday to try to change the subject.

When will the Fake Media ask about the Dems dealings with Russia & why the DNC wouldn't allow the FBI to check their server or investigate?— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 7, 2017

Flynn’s immunity request rejected by the Senate Intelligence Committee may come up. Marcy Wheeler’s analysis gets at why. She looks at weekend stories from the Washington Post and the Associated Press and sees competing narratives about Flynn’s (and Jared Kushner’s) meetings with Russian officials that led to Kushner’s meeting with “the FSB-trained head of a sanctioned bank.” (We learned again yesterday that the Trump family has extensive connections to Russian financiers.) Wheeler writes:

The subtext of taking the two Billingslea stories and the Sergey Gorkov one together is that Flynn — or even the President’s son-in-law — may have provided intelligence to the Russians, in events that led up to the closest thing we’ve seen to a possible quid pro quo.

Your moment of zen

by digby

For my readers who don’t do twitter

This Pikachu dancer’s costume started to deflate and it looked like the dancer was urgently bundled off by government security agents. pic.twitter.com/5dLLc1bopd

— Paul Haine (@paul_haine) May 5, 2017

Politics and Reality Radio: What’s Next for Trumpcare? | Is Trump’s “Religious Freedom” Order a Big Nothingburger?

with Joshua Holland

Last week, House Republicans a remarkably cruel health-care bill. Trump and House Republicans celebrated the “victory,” but that’s premature. This week, we’re joined by Ryan Cooper from The Week to game out what might happen next as the debate moves on to the Senate.

Then we’ll talk about the so-called “religious freedom” order Trump signed this week with Investigative Fund reporter Sarah Posner. The ACLU said it was just political theater and decided not to sue, but Posner says it may have some teeth.

Finally, we’ll chew the fat about various topics with David Ferguson, a senior editor at Raw Story.

Playlist:
Queen Latifah: “Paper”
David Byrne: “My Love Is You”
Jack Sheldon: “I’m Just a Bill”
Elvis Presley: “You Were Always on My Mind”

As always, you can also subscribe to the show on iTunes, Soundcloud or Podbean.

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“Something very, very special like nobody’s seen before”

by digby

Just another little data point in the ongoing Trump corruption watch:

Investors looking to buy a condo at Trump Tower in the Philippines would have found, until this week, some high-powered video testimonials on the project’s official website.

There was Donald Trump, in a message filmed several years before he was elected president of the United States, declaring that the skyscraper bearing his name near the Philippine capital would be “something very, very special, like nobody’s seen before.” Then there was his daughter Ivanka Trump, now a senior White House adviser, lavishing praise on the project as a “milestone in Philippine real estate history.”

Four months into President Trump’s tenure, his business relationship with a developer who is one of the Philippines’ richest and most powerful men has emerged as a prime example of the collision between the private interests of a businessman in the White House and his public responsibility to shape U.S. foreign policy.

The potential conflict first came into focus shortly before Trump was elected, when the Philippines’ iron-fisted president, Rodrigo Duterte, named the Trump Organization’s partner in the Manila real estate venture his top trade envoy.

The connection burst back into public view this week, after Trump stunned human rights advocates by extending a White House invitation to Duterte, known for endorsing hundreds of extrajudicial killings of drug users, following what aides described as a “very friendly” phone call. Trump aides have said the outreach to Duterte is part of a broader effort to isolate North Korea.

Although the promotional videos were posted online in 2013, the continued presence of Trump and his daughter in marketing materials for the Manila tower reflects the extent to which they remain key selling points even as they have vowed to distance themselves from their global real estate and branding businesses.

After The Washington Post inquired Monday about the use of the Trumps in promoting the Manila project, the links and videos on the corporate website could no longer be accessed. Nonetheless, their lingering connection to the property’s sales pitch shows how difficult it is to separate the president from Trump-branded projects, particularly in foreign markets where there is less oversight of how his image is used.

Amanda Miller, vice president of marketing for the Trump Organization, said the material was “historical clips” that were not related to ongoing sales and marketing activity. Ivanka Trump was not aware that she was still featured in materials touting the Manila project, according to someone familiar with her views. The White House did not respond to requests for comment.

Trump’s company does not own or invest in the Manila project, a luxurious 57-story tower nearing completion in Makati, a bustling financial center that is part of metropolitan Manila.

In a long-term licensing deal, the project’s development company agreed to pay royalties for use of the Trump brand. Trump reported receiving $1 million to $6 million in payments from the project between 2014 and mid-2016, according to his financial disclosures.

Jose E.B. Antonio, chairman of the development company, has retained his leadership of the firm even as he functions now in his official capacity as a Duterte appointee. Kris Cole, a spokeswoman for the developer, said that Antonio’s envoy role is an unpaid, nongovernmental position promoting Philippine business interests in the United States.

Antonio, who Cole said was traveling and could not comment, told Bloomberg News in November that his role is to “enlarge the relationship between the two countries,” adding of his business relationship with Trump: “I guess it would be an asset.”

Ethics watchdogs have all weighed in on what’s wrong with this. Here’s one from The Brennan Center that lays it out succinctly:

The first significant risk Trump’s continued business ties pose is of a direct conflict of interest. The Trump Organization is a multi-billion dollar enterprise that does business through over 400 entities in at least twenty countries, including vital partner nations and antagonistic dictatorships. Meanwhile, President Trump enjoys the tremendous powers of the executive branch — robust authority in matters of foreign affairs and domestic policy alike. So long as Trump continues to track the progress of his business empire, he can surely assess how his actions as president might benefit or harm his company’s fortunes. Even intentions to the contrary aside, research shows that, when faced with a financial conflict of interest, individuals demonstrate unconscious bias toward reaching conclusions that benefit them. As such, a cloud of suspicion will engulf some of President Trump’s most momentous decisions, leaving observers wondering whether his personal business interests influenced his policy choices.

The second concern with Trump keeping tabs on his business is that it creates opportunities for bribery. Far from the anachronisms of Tammany-era bribery — a stuffed envelope traded for a quick favor — bribery in this sophisticated context occurs on an industrial scale. Such “indirect lobbying,” as academics who studied media mogul Silvio Berlusconi’s government in Italy politely termed it, is the practice of providing business to a firm that a politician controls, with the expectation that the given politician will, in return, act favorably for the lobbyer’s interests. With Eric Trump keeping his father abreast of the family business’ progress, there exists a credible risk that President Trump may direct the power of the federal government to reward those who benefit his bottom line and punish those who threaten it.

Some might argue it is premature to project these risks onto Trump’s presidency. But, even if one grants President Trump the fullest benefit of the doubt, his awareness of the Trump Organization’s vital financials is damaging to our democracy. When it comes to corruption, optics are critical. Evidence of an opportunity for President Trump to act in an underhanded manner, even absent bad motives, degrades faith in our democratic institutions.

Everyone will be very relieved to find out that nobody involved ever made a contribution to a charity devoted to helping millions of poor people around the world so this is perfectly fine. And as far as I know the Trumps and the Kushners haven’t been using a personal email server as they enrich themselves by selling the presidency to the highest bidder. You can relax.

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Control Alt-Right

by digby

The Trump Inauguration Deploraball

I’m trying to keep an open mind about all this. But it gets harder every day:

The far right is seemingly determined to add credence to our darkest Trump/Russia suspicions. https://t.co/uLRFHWbDR4

— Lindsay Beyerstein (@Beyerstein) May 7, 2017

Reuters reports:

U.S. far-right activists helped amplify a leak of hacked emails belonging to leading French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron’s campaign, some researchers said on Saturday, with automated bots and the Twitter account of WikiLeaks also propelling a leak that came two days before France’s presidential vote.

The rapid spread on Twitter (TWTR.N), Facebook (FB.O) and the messaging forum 4chan of emails and other campaign documents that Macron’s campaign said on Friday had been stolen recalled the effort by right-wing activists and Russian state media to promote hacked documents embarrassing to Democratic U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton last year.

It also renewed questions whether social media companies have done enough to limit fake accounts or spammed content on their platforms and how media organizations should report on hacked information.

Twitter declined to comment on whether it had taken any specific action in response to the Macron leak. Facebook did not respond to a request for comment.

Analysis conducted by The Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab published on Saturday found that the hashtag #MacronLeaks reached 47,000 tweets in three and a half hours after it was first used by Jack Posobiec, a writer in Washington for the far-right news organization The Rebel. Posobiec’s online biography said he coordinated grassroots organizing for a group that supported U.S. President Donald Trump’s campaign.

Posobiec’s initial tweet on the Macron documents was retweeted fifteen times within one minute and 87 times in five minutes, Atlantic Council senior fellow Ben Nimmo wrote in a blog published on Medium.

Posobiec is prolific on Twitter, where he has a large following of more than 100,000 accounts. Contacted by Reuters, Posobiec said he did not operate bots and that he used his account to share a post he saw on 4chan.

Bots helped move the hashtag from the United States to France, according to Nimmo, where surveys show far-right leader Marine Le Pen trailing Macron by more than 20 points heading into Sunday’s election.

French electoral law forbids candidates from commenting during Saturday and until polling stations close on Sunday.

WikiLeaks, the anti-secrecy group that published hacked emails belonging to Democrats during the 2016 presidential election, provided the largest boost of attention on Twitter to the Macron emails, Nimmo said.

The group did not publish the information itself but tweeted about the leak at least 15 times.

“As the dominant publication in the field we were hours ahead of all other major outlets,” WikiLeaks said in a private Twitter message to a Reuters reporter. “That’s what our readers expect.”

Some researchers also observed the use of identical phrasing in blogs about the leaks, which they alleged was aimed at driving Alphabet Inc’s (GOOGL.O) Google search result rankings. Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

About nine gigabytes of data purporting to be documents from the Macron campaign were posted on Pastebin, a site that allows anonymous document sharing.

Other recent high-profile political leaks, including those during the U.S. presidential election, have often been dumped by WikiLeaks, which has a sizeable online following and international recognition. 

There’s more at the link. They don’t know yet if the Russian government was involved. For now, all they know, is that American alt-right figures were.

Not that it’s anything more than curious at this point , but that’s Prosobiec and his wife, a Russian immigrant, at the Deploraball.

A hundred million dollar lie

by digby

James Dodson has played golf since childhood. As a reporter and author he’s won numerous awards for his writing about the game, and he has been associated with many of golf’s greats. He co-wrote Arnold Palmer’s memoir.

That’s no doubt why Dodson was sought after as a playing partner and luncheon guest by the man who said until quite recently that one of his primary jobs was making golf great again.

‘Donald Trump Loves Your Books’

Though they hadn’t met, Dodson was aware of the fellow’s impact on the game.

“I knew Trump was very interested in golf,” Dodson says. “I knew he was buying up golf courses. His M.O. was to find a financially distressed property, buy it, keep it in bankruptcy, do a half-a-million-dollar renovation, fire the entire staff and hire a third back.”

So James Dodson, who grew up a Republican but currently describes his political stance as “radical centrist,” knew that. And maybe he thought that’s all there was to know about Donald Trump. But that was before they’d met. Which, as I’ve suggested, wasn’t Dodson’s idea.

“This PR guy kept calling me and inviting me,” Dodson says. “And he kept saying things like, ‘Oh, Donald Trump loves your books.’ And I kept saying, ‘Donald Trump doesn’t read books, I’m told. And he hadn’t a clue who I am.’ Anyway, he called three or four times. Finally, I said yes.”

That was three years ago. And Dodson probably wouldn’t have regarded the invitation as an imposition if he hadn’t had other plans. Dodson and his wife had arranged to visit Arnold Palmer at Palmer’s home in Latrobe, Pennsylvania. From there, the Dodsons were headed to Scotland for some golf. Joining Donald Trump at his new course in North Carolina meant juggling those plans.

But, at his wife’s urging, Dodson agreed to leave their home in Southern Pines, North Carolina, and drive to Charlotte, site of the recently reconstituted Trump National Golf Club Charlotte, in order to meet with The Donald, who was not the only star attraction.

“Greg Norman was gonna show up, and he and Trump were gonna play the first nine of the course,” Dodson explains. “I was gonna play with Eric, his son, a local congressman and the guy I assumed was his bodyguard. And then we would swap at the nine holes. I would play with Trump and Greg, and then we would have a big lunch and hear all about the club.”

When the big day arrived, a dark, gray sky provided the first sign that all would not go as planned. Dodson was a little late arriving, and by the time he entered the Trump National Charlotte clubhouse, his host was already holding forth.

“Trump was strutting up and down, talking to his new members about how they were part of the greatest club in North Carolina,” Dodson says. “And when I first met him, I asked him how he was — you know, this is the journalist in me — I said, ‘What are you using to pay for these courses?’ And he just sort of tossed off that he had access to $100 million.”

$100 million.

“So when I got in the cart with Eric,” Dodson says, “as we were setting off, I said, ‘Eric, who’s funding? I know no banks — because of the recession, the Great Recession — have touched a golf course. You know, no one’s funding any kind of golf construction. It’s dead in the water the last four or five years.’ And this is what he said. He said, ‘Well, we don’t rely on American banks. We have all the funding we need out of Russia.’ I said, ‘Really?’ And he said, ‘Oh, yeah. We’ve got some guys that really, really love golf, and they’re really invested in our programs. We just go there all the time.’ Now that was three years ago, so it was pretty interesting.”

Well, yeah. It is.

‘Ask Me Anything You Want’

Shortly after that conversation took place, James Dodson and Eric Trump teed off behind the foursome that included Donald Trump. And shortly after that, the promise of those clouds was fulfilled.

“A bolt of lightning literally hit a house, and the rains came down, and we raced in our carts back to the clubhouse,” Dodson says. “And, truthfully, I thought, ‘I’m going to be able to clear out of here now. This will be great.’ And I’m loading my clubs in the back of my car, thinking I can get an early start back to Southern Pines for our trip to Latrobe. And this kid comes running out: ‘Mr. Dodson! Mr. Trump really wants you to come in and have a cheeseburger.’ And I said, ‘OK, I’ll do it.’ And that kid pointed out they were ‘really, really awesome cheeseburgers.'”

At lunch Trump continued to celebrate the virtues of the Charlotte course and those of various other courses he’d bought or was about to buy.

And the cheeseburgers … they were awesome, tremendous, right?

“You know, it was — it was a cheeseburger,” Dodson says. “It was a platter of cheeseburgers.”

Dodson listened politely to Trump’s celebration of what he’d wrought, and when he’d finished his cheeseburger …

“I said, ‘Well, I gotta go.’ And Trump hopped up, and he said, ‘Well, I’ll walk you to the door,'” Dodson recalls. “And he took my arm, a real bro hug, and we’re crossing this long room, and he says, ‘You’re the one that writes all the books.’ And I said, ‘Well, I’ve written a few.’ And he said, ‘I haven’t read ’em. Because I really don’t get much chance to read books. But I write books. Have you read my books?’ I deadpanned. I said, ‘Yes, they’re all stacked up on my bedside table. I haven’t gotten to them yet.’ But he didn’t seem to get the joke. And we’re walking in this bro hug. I mean, very snug, and he’s a big guy. And he said, ‘So, you’re a journalist. You didn’t get to ask me any questions. Ask me anything you want. I’m the most open interview you’ve ever had. I’ll tell you anything. Straightest talker you’ve ever met.'”

Dodson tossed his host a couple of batting practice questions about golf courses. Then he tried a change-up.

“So,” Dodson continues, “I said, ‘Ah, are you going to run for president again?’ ‘Yeah, yeah, I’m thinking about it,’ he says. ‘You know, everywhere I go, people say to me, “Trump, Trump, this country is totally f-ed up. You need to run for president. You’re the only guy that could straighten it out. We need a businessman.”‘ And he says, ‘What do you think? I oughta run?’ And I said, ‘You’d be fun to follow.’ So he said, ‘Yeah, yeah. Let me tell you. I’m thinking of doing it. And he said, ‘And I’ll tell you what: I’ll let you know if I do it.’

“Now we’re at the door. And he’s still got me in the bro hug. And he says, ‘Come on, those are nothing. Those are softballs.’ And he says, ‘One more for the road. Give me something with some mustard.’ And this is what I said: ‘Well, OK, fair enough. My wife and I watched The Apprentice for the first time the other night in preparation for coming over here. And, honestly, the question that kept popping up in my head is: are you as big an a–hole as you seem? Or do you just play one on TV? And this is what he did. He dropped my arm like it had caught fire spontaneously, stepped back at least a yard, made that kind of constipated furious pig face he makes, slapped my back, doubled over and popped up laughing like you can’t believe and declared, ‘Yeah, it’s fun, isn’t it?’

Read on for Arnold Palmer’s view. Let’s just say he wasn’t really a fan although Trump thought they were bffs.

Great story about Trump. But it’s the russian thing that’s interesting, no?

Trump is a big liar so you can’t assume he was telling the truth there either. But it’s certainly possible this was true, particularly since Don Jr said the same thing at the time.

Oh, and by the way, the Chinese are investing heavily in the Kushner family, mostly because the Kushner family is over there selling them on the idea that it’s a good investment.

Because of this:

NYT reporter says this part of presentation id ‘d Trump as the “key decision maker” for visa program. Kushner family openly selling access. pic.twitter.com/t7Z1VmwR0A

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) May 7, 2017

And, keep in mind that Trump won by calling Hillary Clinton “crooked” after the New York Times and the Washington Post went into business with Steve Bannon to spread that meme among the people:

In April 2015, Politico reported that the “New York Times, The Washington Post and Fox News have made exclusive agreements with a conservative author for early access to his opposition research on Hillary Clinton, a move that has confounded members of the Clinton campaign and some reporters.”

As ThinkProgress detailed last year, Clinton Cash cited a fake press release and relied on circumstantial evidence to make a case that the Clinton State Department traded favors for donations to the Clinton Foundation and speaking fees for Bill Clinton. Other outlets highlighted a number of additional errors in the book ranging from Schweizer falsely inflating Bill Clinton’s speaking fees to overstating the power then-Secretary Hillary Clinton had to prevent Russia from buying a company with uranium mining operations in the United States. Margaret Sullivan, then the public editor of the Times, questioned her paper’s arrangement with GAI in a April 2015 blog post, writing that even though there was no financial arrangement with Schweizer, “I still don’t like the way it looked.”

Nonetheless, in August, the Times reported that the FBI used the book as the basis of an investigation into the Clinton Foundation that didn’t go anywhere.

Last week, the Post reported that Bannon, co-founder of GAI, accepted $376,000 in pay from the 501(c)3 non-profit since launching it in 2012. Schweizer, meanwhile, received $778,000. The report also confirmed that “Post reporters have used the institute as a resource for investigative leads.”

Instead of fact-checking, the Times and Post ignored Clinton Cash’s errors Schweizer’s history of inaccuracy and amplified the book’s anti-Clinton innuendos — material Trump himself used to attack Hillary, win the presidency, and empower white nationalists like Bannon. Now, in the wake of a campaign where fake news outperformed legitimate reporting, the country’s two largest papers are left penning editorials condemning Trump for elevating a man whose flawed work they amplified.

Sigh.

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Touchy, touchy, touchy

by digby

Republicans really don’t like being asked to defend this Trumpcare monstrosity:

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) snapped at a Democratic county executive on Friday for asking him how he will handle citizens of Wisconsin losing their health care under the GOP-controlled House vote to repeal and replace Obamacare.

Appearing at an Appleton event to promote tourism, Walker snapped at Outagamie County Executive Tom Nelson for asking about the AHCA, accusing the local official of a “political stunt,” with Nelson pointing out, “Look, this obviously has gotten under your skin.”

As cameras rolled, Nelson attempted to engage Walker on what his plans are to keep Wisconsinites insured only to have the governor snap back at him, reports WBAY.

“The plan is I’m going to wait for what the Senate and the president do, and we’ll see from there,” Walker replied before grandstanding for the cameras in mock outrage. “So just to be clear folks, just to be clear, the county executive wants to take away from tourism right now and play a political stunt about a topic that has nothing to do with what we’re talking about today.”

Walker accused Nelson of playing politics, telling him he had a chance to run for Congress and adding, “You want to run for governor, run for governor,”

“Look, this obviously has gotten under your skin,” Nelson shot back

“What’s gotten under my skin, ladies and gentlemen,” Walker said as he again addressed the cameras, “is the fact that someone decided to pull a political stunt and show up at an event about tourism.”

Oh boo hoo. He wants to talk about something fun like tourism and everybody’s making him talk about the fact that his party has voted to make millions go bankrupt, suffer and die. Sad!

By the way, Walker also said he might opt for the pre-existing conditions requirement waiver. He would certainly like to get hold of some of that high risk pool money that has no strings attached. He could use it for tax cuts for millionaires. He later clarified that he’s “not looking to change” policies for those with pre-existing conditions. That sure must be confidence building to the people of Wisconsin. (I wish I understood what a majority of them see in that guy. It truly escapes me.)

Let’s face it. These people believe that if you don’t have enough money to cover high premiums you don’t deserve health insurance, period. And if you have a pre-existing condition you need to have enough money to cover all your medical expenses out of pocket if no one will insure you. And if you have insurance and get sick and it turns out your policy doesn’t cover more than a bare minimum, again, you need to have enough money to cover your expenses. That’s how a “free market” in health care has to work. It’s very expensive, like yachts and airplanes. If you want to have those things you need to get rich. It’s that simple.

These Republican officials are almost all millionaires. They also have gold plated health insurance and they won’t give that up. They deserve it because they’re good.
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Revenge of the Sick
by Tom Sullivan

Even before the vote in the U.S. House of Representatives this week to pass the American Health Care Act, 2018 began shaping up to be a year in which Republicans could take big losses in the mid-term elections. Florida Republican Ileana Ros-Lehtinen announced last Sunday that she would retire from representing Florida’s 27th District. Hillary Clinton won the district by 20 points in November. “It was Clinton’s biggest margin of any Republican-held seat in the country,” the Miami Herald reported.

With a “new” Miami electorate” made up of “younger Cubans, non-Cuban Hispanics, and socially liberal whites living in and around Miami Beach,” the district is “moving away from the national GOP at warp speed,” according to the Cook Political Report. Cook moved FL-27 into the lean Democratic column.

Ros-Lehtinen’s district is not unique. Democrats need 24 seats to win back the House in 2018. Twenty-three Republicans hold seats in districts Hillary Clinton won in November.

The New York Times today examines what that means for 2018:

All seven of the House Republicans from California who represent districts that Mr. Trump lost voted for the bill, a collective act of political audacity in a state simmering with anger toward the president. While Mrs. Clinton won Representative Carlos Curbelo’s Miami district by 16 percentage points, he also voted yes. And other Republican lawmakers who represent districts that decisively rejected Mr. Trump, like Mr. Roskam and Martha E. McSally of Arizona, supported the measure.

All told, 80 House Republicans from districts Mr. Trump carried by 55 percent or less voted for the health law’s repeal. “Any Republican member of Congress in a seat that the president won by less than 10 points who isn’t concerned needs to be concerned,” said Glen Bolger, a Republican pollster.

Emerging from what the Times calls Democrats’ “eight-year defensive crouch,” strategists with the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee are focused on “more than 90 districts where Mr. Trump earned less than 55 percent of the vote.” What remains a wild card is how many Republican lawmakers serving under an historically unpopular president will follow Ros-Lehtinen into retirement. After publicly celebrating their vote Thursday to repeal Obamacare and replace it with, essentially, what people had before or worse, more Republicans in the House might find it’s time to spend more time with their families.

As Simon Malloy observed at The Week, should some form of the House legislation make it into law, Republican-controlled legislatures will have to decide whether to vote to “screw over the sick” as their House colleagues did:

The legislation empowers state governments to seek waivers to pre-existing condition protections. Now that the AHCA has passed the House, Republican governors and state legislators are going to face difficult questions about whether they support this widely disliked bill and plan to obtain waivers that would actively imperil the physical and financial well-being of sick people within their states.

It is all well and good to preach that government closest to the people serves the people best so long as the people are kept at arm’s length. But it will be a different game both in the states and nationally when people without access start dying … again. Republican congresspersons are finding that out already:

A conservative Republican congressman from Idaho is drawing criticism for his response to a town-hall attendee’s concerns about how his party’s health-care bill would affect Medicaid recipients.

“You are mandating people on Medicaid to accept dying,” the woman said.

“That line is so indefensible,” said Rep. Raúl R. Labrador, a member of the influential House Freedom Caucus. “Nobody dies because they don’t have access to health care.”

The boos instantly drowned him out.

Good luck selling that.

A activist friend here lost here 33 year-old son in 2008. He had an uninsurable birth defect that predisposed him to colon cancer. He died from that. She’s not at all shy about getting up in politicians’ faces about it. If the Senate passes and Trump signs the AHCA, a lot of people are going to be getting in their faces about it.

It will be a helluva way for the Democrats to win back control of the House, if they don’t join Republicans in shooting themselves in the foot first. But I’ll take it.