Angela Rye pounds Jeffrey Lord with common sense about Trump’s first 100 days

By David Edwards

CNN contributor Angela Rye on Tuesday pointed out that President Donald Trump had been plagued with “many epic fails” during his first 100 days in office.

During a discussion on CNN, ardent Trump backer Jeffrey Lord asserted that Trump’s critics could no longer suspect Donald Trump’s campaign of colluding with Russia after the president ordered an attack on Syria that reportedly angered Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“So much for the idea that Vladimir Putin was blamed to give Donald Trump the presidency,” Lord quipped. “It is not possible that Vladimir Putin preferred Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton.”

Reflecting on the president’s first 100 days in office, Rye argued that the White House had a misguided view of success.

“Wins are determined by how they impact the American people,” she explained, noting the disparity with President Barack Obama, who in his first 100 days signed an equal pay law and a law to create jobs and build infrastructure.

“And then I think you compare that to what I think I would characterize as many epic fails by the Trump administration,” she continued. “The Muslim ban and the various iterations of that. The [border] wall, the fact that he said to taxpayers, ‘Okay, I’m just kidding. Actually, you all will pay for the wall.’ The number of moments where they’ve had to pivot.”

“I think the only real thing where Donald Trump has won… is golfing. He is winning on golfing.

He’s 28 days out of 100 into golfing. And it’s so funny because he was the critic-in-chief about Barack Obama’s golf game.”

CNN host noted that Trump was on track to spend more on travel in his first year in office than Obama had spent during his entire eight years.

“Eh, I don’t think so,” Lord replied dismissively. “Did President Obama donate his first month’s salary to the National Parks Service? I don’t think so. Did he play golf on his own golf course? I don’t think so.”

“Three million dollars per golf trip!” Rye shot back. “Melania staying in New York City — a million dollars a day… I am so surprised that you won’t even agree with me on this point. You’re talking about wins for the American people. I would push back. Climate change is a real thing.”

“You talk about me and my friends, tell your friends that there are icebergs melting, okay! And your guy is dialing back regulations that are harmful, not just to the American people, but globally.”

Watch the video below from CNN, broadcast April 11, 2017.

Trump's Jobs Fraud Exposed As The Economy Creates Only 98,000 New Jobs In March

By Jason Easley

No longer able to ride on President Obama's coattails, Donald Trump was given a dose of economic reality as only half as many jobs were created in March as economists anticipated. 

The Hill reported, “Jobs were revised down by 38,000 for January and February based on what was previously reported, but each month remained above 200,000. But the last three months have averaged a solid 178,000 jobs each. Economists had predicted that March jobs might slip after January and February posted robust gains.”

To get a sense of who is getting hurt in the Trump economy, here is a year to year contrast from the Center For American Progress as provided to PoliticusUSA:

Job creation in February and March declined by 56.4% compared to the same period in 2016.
For women, job creation in February and March declined by 92.9% compared to the same period in 2016.

Black Americans saw absolutely no statistical decline in unemployment in March.

Employment in retail trade declined by 30,000 in March compared to an increase of more than 31,000 last March.

Employment on Wall Street trended up, with the financial industry adding 9,000 jobs in March.

Job growth is slowing because President Trump’s immigration policies are hurting tourism and despite his rhetoric that cutting regulations would create jobs, the reality is a policy of shifting wealth to the top has resulted in fewer jobs being created.

The notion that Donald Trump was a jobs president is an example where the White House’s rhetoric has never matched the policy.

Trump promised to save manufacturing jobs, but companies like Boeing and Carrier continue to lay off workers.

The economy belongs to Donald Trump now, and these jobs numbers are the first taste of what the Republican job killing ideology is going to do to the US economy.

The Republican Identity Crisis

A conservative by any other name would still be confused about where they fall on the ideological spectrum in the Trump era.

About the Author

• 
  McKay Coppins is a staff writer at The Atlantic, and author of The Wilderness, a book about the battle over the future of the Republican Party.
  • Twitter
  
  These are confusing times to be a Republican.
  
  For the past several decades, members of the GOP have mapped the ideological range found within their party onto a fairly straightforward spectrum—one that runs from “moderate” to “conservative.” The formulation was simplistic, of course, but it provided a useful shorthand in assessing politicians, and in explaining one’s own political orientation.
  
  A small-government culture warrior in Arizona would be situated on the far-right end of the spectrum; a pro-choice Chamber of Commerce type in Massachusetts might place himself on the other end. And across the country, there were millions of people—from officeholders to ordinary Republican voters—who identified somewhere between those two poles.
  
  But with the rise of Donald Trump—and his spectrum-bending brand of populist nationalism—many longtime Republicans are now struggling to figure out where they fit in this fast-shifting philosophical landscape. In recent weeks, two prominent Republicans have told me they are sincerely struggling to explain where they fall on the ideological spectrum these days. It’s not that they’ve changed their beliefs; it’s that the old taxonomy has become incoherent.
  
  For example, does being an outspoken Trump critic make you a “moderate” RINO? Does it matter whether you’re criticizing him for an overly austere healthcare bill, or for reckless infrastructure spending plan? And who owns the “far right” now—is it “constitutional conservatives” like Ted Cruz, or “alt-right” white supremacists like Richard Spencer?
  
  When I raised these questions on a Twitter earlier this week, I was swamped with hundreds of responses and dozens of emails from longtime Republicans who described feeling like they are lost inside their own homes.
  
  Some, like Jordan Team from Washington, D.C., related how their attempts at explaining their personal politics have devolved into a kind of absurdist comedy:
  

  I've always identified as a more moderate R - even "establishment Republican", if you will. I usually always use "moderate" or "Establishment" when saying I'm a Republican to separate myself from more hard-line Tea Party Freedom Caucus conservatives.

  These days, however, I feel like it requires even further explanation to separate myself from the nationalism/populism that Trump & team espouse, since they're all now technically Republicans. Usually it's something super catchy & brief along the lines of: "I'm a moderate Republican - or at least, have been one, not really sure that that means anymore - but I don't support Trump or populism - I'm traditionally conservative"  And even that doesn't always get the point across. I think the easiest when trying to have a conversation with someone is a two step process. Step 1: "I'm a Republican but don't like Trump," and then if the convo keeps going/they know politics/they're interested, there's step 2: "I'm more moderate/establishment than Tea Party/Freedom Caucus".
  

  Other people, meanwhile, shared more tragic testimonials. “I feel honestly like a part of my identity was stolen,” wrote Alycia Kuehne, a conservative Christian from Dallas, Texas.
  But virtually everyone who wrote to me shared a common complaint: The traditional “Left ↔ Right” spectrum used to describe and categorize Republicans has become obsolete in the age of Trump. The question now is what to replace it with.
  
  To provoke interesting answers, I asked people who wrote to me to imagine the Republican voter who is furthest from themselves—be it ideologically, philosophically, or attitudinally—and then to answer the question: What is the most meaningful difference between you and that person?
  
  The proposed spectrums that emerged from their responses—some of which I’ve included below—are not meant to be peer-reviewed by political scientists. But they offer new, and potentially more useful, ways to map the emerging fault lines that now divide the American right.
  
  LIBERTARIAN ↔ AUTHORITARIAN: One of the most common responses I received from Republicans argued that the party could be divided between authoritarians (who tend to gravitate toward Trump) and libertarians (who are generally repelled by his strong-man instincts). In an email that was typical of several I received, Aaron L. M. Goodwin, from California, wrote:
  

  I grew up in a pretty conservative household. We were home-schooled Mormons. We listened to conservative talk radio. I was the only 10 year old I knew of who loved to watch C-Span. These days I feel completely alienated from the GOP. But, I don't feel like I'm the one who sold out. So where does that leave me?
  
  I believe the conservative/liberal spectrum has been overtaken by one for democratic/authoritarian ... Most of the Republicans I still feel some kinship with are from a multitude of ideologies, but they share an ideology based on classical liberal democracy. We all share a deep-seeded suspicion of rule by power, and I believe, are closer to the original intent of our founding documents.
  

  GRIEVANCE-MOTIVATED ↔ PHILOSOPHICALLY MOTIVATED:  Liz Mair, a libertarian-leaning GOP strategist, wrote that she’s been convinced after “300 gazillion conversations with all sorts of conservatives”—including a range of lawmakers, writers, pundits, candidates, and grassroots-level activists—that the biggest division within the party is one that separates Fox News-a-holics driven by tribal grievance from people who have some kind of philosophically rooted belief system: 
  

  I honestly think the split in conservatism comes more down to philosophy versus identity politics than anything. Are you opposed to things on philosophical or tribal grounds? Are you a believer of a member of our clan? (Said in the Scottish sense) ...

  I bet if you polled Trump primary voters and asked them what was the bigger problem—insufficiently limited government or transgender Muslim feminists being celebrated at the Oscars, a big majority would say the latter.

  ANTI-ESTABLISHMENT ↔ ESTABLISHMENT: The outsider/insider trope is well-worn in contemporary conservative politics—so much so that you could argue the terms have lost their meaning. But based on the emails I received, many Republicans (on both ends of the spectrum) still view the party through that lens. On one end are people who respect existing political institutions, and believe in conforming to their norms and using the system to advance their agenda. On other end of this spectrum are people who believe the establishment is hopelessly corrupt and ineffectual, and that it should be circumvented whenever possible.
  
  The flaw in this formulation, it seems to me, is that virtually every Republican who has entered Congress over the past eight years started out on the anti-establishment end of the spectrum, and then slid—involuntarily, perhaps, but inevitably—toward the establishment end. That’s because, as Stephen Spiker from Virginia emailed, once you run for office and win, you necessarily become a part of the system, an insider:
  

  I see many colleagues in the party taken in by the "establishment vs anti-establishment" spectrum. Essentially populism, as the anti-establishment folks are "burn it down" because they don't feel represented and want a fighter. That lead to Dave Brat winning in 2014, and Trump winning in 2016.

  Now that its Trump vs Brat, you're going to see the inherent decay in this school of thought: the anti-establishment crowd turning on their former heroes like Dave Brat (as they turned on Cantor previously). He's in Congress, he's an insider, he's standing in the way, etc.

  It will eventually turn on Trump as well, as he falls short on goal after goal. When it happens (as in, before or after Trump is out of office) is always dependent on having the right person run at the right time on the right message, but it will happen.

  Most notable about the anti-establishment position is that there's no consistent end game or policy goal. It exists for the sake of itself. That's what frustrates folks who actually have firm ideological stances.
  

  ABSOLUTISTS  ↔ DEALMAKERS:  Many of the most high-profile intra-party battles in recent years have been fought not over ideas, but tactics and a willingness to compromise. While Republicans in Washington were essentially unanimous in their opposition to President Obama’s agenda, they differed—at least at first—over whether they should cut deals at the legislative bargaining table, or, say, shut the government down until they got exactly what they wanted. The absolutists largely won out during the Obama presidency—but what about now?
  
  On one end of this spectrum are people like the Freedom Caucus purists from whom it is all but impossible to extract concessions; on the other are the dealmakers who will compromise virtually anything to get some kind of legislation passed.
  
  Several Republicans who wrote to me were, I think, circling this idea, which my colleague Conor Friedersdorf recently articulated:
  

  Do populist Republicans want a federal government where politicians stand on principle and refuse to compromise? Or do they want a pragmatist to make fabulous deals?
  … Is a GOP House member more likely to be punished in a primary for thwarting a Donald Trump deal … or compromising to make a deal happen? Were I the political consultant for an ambitious primary candidate in a safe Republican district, I can imagine a successful challenge regardless of what course the incumbent chose, voters having been primed to respond to either critique.
  

  OPEN/TOLERANT ↔ NATIVIST/RACIST: This is the probably the most provocative construct that was proposed, but it was also a popular one. For many Trump-averse Republicans, one of the biggest perceived differences between themselves and hardcore Trump fans is attitudes toward racial minorities and foreign immigrants. The alt-right dominates one end of the spectrum—and they place themselves on the polar opposite end.
  
  Granted, this spectrum was not proposed to me by any Trump supporters, and no doubt many of them would strongly disagree with this categorization. But there’s no question it’s one of the defining debates inside the party right now. Evan McMullin, a conservative who ran for president last year under the #NeverTrump banner, was quoted saying that racism is the single biggest problem with the party today.
  

  * * *

  This is, of course, by no means a comprehensive list of the divisions within the GOP. For example, one of the most talked-about conflicts to emerge in the past year has been between “nationalism” and “globalism.” But despite efforts by Steve Bannon and other Trump advisers to frame the ideological debate that way, very few GOP voters—at least none who wrote to me—identify as “globalists.” Instead, these new spectrums represent a few of the ways in which Republicans—eager to escape the disorder and confusion of the Trump era—are categorizing themselves and each other.

Majority Want Trump To Resign If His Campaign Colluded With Russia

If the Trump campaign worked with Russia to sway the 2016 election, the American people want the president to start packing his bags.

By Sean Colarossi

If it turns out that Donald Trump’s campaign did, indeed, work with the Russians to defeat Hillary Clinton in last fall’s presidential election, a majority of the country – 53 percent – thinks the president should resign.

According to the explosive new poll from Public Policy Polling (PPP), which debuted Wednesday night on MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Show, the American people said – by a 14-point margin – that Trump should step down if there was collusion.



Another result revealed on Maddow’s program found that a plurality of the country believes Trump’s campaign did, in fact, work with Russia to swing the 2016 election in his favor.

If you’re keeping score at home: The American people think both that Trump’s campaign colluded with Russia and that the president should resign as a result.

While there is endless political polling released on a weekly basis asking about hypothetical scenarios, what should be terrifying to the White House is that the explosive Russia scandal is just one more investigation or one more small piece of evidence away from making the questions posed in the PPP survey a reality.

At that point, the president will have to face a country that doesn’t just believe he isn’t doing a good job, as polls repeatedly suggest, but also that he should no longer have the job at all.

DNC just asked all its staffers to resign

By Tyler Durden

Former Labor Secretary Tom Perez, who took over as the chair of the Democratic National Committee in late February following Hillary's stunning November defeat, has asked for his entire staff to submit their resignation letters by no later than April 15th.

Of course, the move comes after a series of scandals plagued the DNC throughout the 2016 election cycle, including rather undeniable evidence that former Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz intentionally undermined the campaign of Bernie Sanders while her replacement, Donna Brazile, seemingly did the same by passing Hillary's team debate questions in advance of Town Hall discussions with Bernie.
 
According to NBC, Tom Perez decided to clean house at the DNC shortly after taking over the leadership role from Donna Brazile and will use the mass firing as an opportunity to restructure how the party will be run going forward. 

Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez has launched a major reshuffling of the party's organization that has been stung by recent crisis — and the DNC has requested the resignation letters of all current staffers be submitted by next month.

Party staff routinely see major turnover with a new boss and staffers were alerted earlier to expect such a move. However, the mass resignation letters will give Perez a chance to completely remake the DNC's headquarters from scratch. Staffing had already reached unusual lows following a round of layoffs in December.

Immediately after Perez' election in late February, an adviser to outgoing DNC Interim Chair Donna Brazile, Leah Daughtry, asked every employee to submit a letter of resignation dated April 15, according to multiple sources familiar with the party's internal working.

A committee advising Perez on his transition is now interviewing staff and others as part of a top-to-bottom review process to help decide not only who will stay and who will go, but how the party should be structured in the future.

Back in late February, Perez appeared on Meet the Press to tell Chuck Todd that he would look to implement a "culture change" at the DNC before comparing his own party to a busted plane traveling at 20,000 feet.

Perez has spent his first weeks on the job in "active listening mode," hearing from Democrats in Washington and in small group meetings across the country before making any big moves.

"What we're trying to do is culture change," he told NBC News between stops of a listening tour in Michigan Friday. "We're repairing a plane at 20,000 feet. You can't land the plane, shut it down, and close it until further notice."

"If your goal is you have to please everyone then you end up pleasing no one," he added.

 We're still awaiting confirmation from Rachel Maddow that this mass firing came after the discovery that the DNC was infiltrated by Russian spies coordinating with the Trump campaign.

Trump's Fool On The Hill: Devin Nunes Is Making A Mockery Of The Russia Investigation

The House Intelligence Committee Chairman has proven himself hapless or worse. 

 

By Jefferson Morley / AlterNet March 28, 2017

 

Rep. Devin Nunes, California Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, could not have been clearer in his questioning of FBI director James Comey last week.

NUNES: Director Comey, I remain extremely concerned about the widespread illegal leaks that you just referenced in your — in your testimony. Just for the record though, I wanna get this on the record.

Does the unauthorized disclosure of classified information to the press violate 18 USC 793, a section of the Espionage Act that criminalizes improperly accessing handling or transmitting national defense information?

COMEY: Yes

NUNES: Would an unauthorized disclosure of FISA-derived information to the press violate 18 USC 798, a section of the Espionage Act that criminalizes the disclosure of information concerning the communication and intelligence activities of the United States?

COMEY: Yes, in addition to being a breach of our trust with the FISA Court that oversees our use of those authorities.

NUNES: Thank you, Director

The next day, Nunes made an unannounced late-night visit to the White House and spoke with unidentified official (but possibly a former Nunes staffer) about FISA-derived information. Nunes then spoke to reporters  and said that he had “confirmed that on numerous occasions, the intelligence community incidentally collected information about U.S. citizens involved in the Trump transition.

Nunes explained:

"Details about U.S. persons associated with the incoming administration, details with little or no apparent foreign intelligence value, were widely disseminated in intelligence community reporting.”

Trump proceeded to claim vindication for his baseless claim that President Obama wiretapped Trump Tower. Nunes’ statement most definitely did not confirm Trump’s claim, but that was hardly the biggest problem with Nunes' charge.

The Washington Postnoted that, "Nunes’s statements appear to center on surveillance approved by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, a secretive panel that authorizes the interception of communications of known or suspected agents of foreign powers — such as ambassadors — or terrorism suspects."

In other words, if Nunes wasn’t making up the whole story, he made an unauthorized disclosure of FISA-derived classified information in violation of the Espionage Act—exactly what he criticized others for doing.

Nunes’ folly epitomizes the ongoing collapse of the Trump administration’s efforts to defend itself from the ongoing FBI investigation of possible collusion between Trump’s entourage and Russian government officials during the 2016 presidential campaign.

After Nunes sabotaged the strategy of House Republican to investigate the leaks, not the accumulating evidence, Trump was reduced to demanding that Congress investigate Hillary Clinton’s ties to a Russian uranium deal, which are not the subject of an FBI investigation.

That didn’t work either. When former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates indicated her desire to testify on Tuesday to the Intelligence Committee about how former NSC adviser Michael Flynn dissembled on his pre-inauguration meetings with Russian officials, Nunes abruptly canceled the previously scheduled hearing.

Nunes has disqualified himself as the leader of the Intelligence Committee’s investigation, said ranking minority member Rep. Adam Schiff. On Monday night, he called on Nunes to “recuse himself from any further involvement in the Russia investigation” and all “oversight matters pertaining to any incidental collection of the Trump transition."

Nunes dismissed Schiff’s call and House Speaker Paul Ryan said Nunes would continue as chairman, though its hard to see why the Republicans would want him to.

Nunes implicated himself in a possible violation of the law, destroyed the Republican’s preferred line of defense, and implicitly admitted that the administration has no rebuttal to Yates testimony.

As Colin Kahl, former national security adviser to Vice President Joe Biden, said on Twitter on Monday “There are a lot of things we still don’t know about Trump-Russia ties. But there are actually a lot of things we DO know.”

Kahl listed 36 points of fact, none of which Nunes seems prepared to respond to, much less rebut.
In the understatement of the week, thePost’sAaron Blake  said “Nunes isn’t very good at this.”

Jefferson Morley is AlterNet's Washington correspondent. He is the author of Snow-Storm in August: Washington City, Francis Scott Key, and the Forgotten Race Riot of 1835 and Our Man in Mexico: Winston Scott and the Hidden History of the CIA. 

Trump could learn a lot from his mistakes. He won’t.

By Eugene Robinson Opinion writer March 27 at 7:43 PM

 

Last week’s health-care fiasco could end up being a positive experience for President Trump if he learns a few obvious lessons. Spoiler alert: He won’t.

The first thing that should dawn on Trump is that the warring Republican factions in Congress have multiple agendas, none of which remotely resembles his own. This is why the bill that House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) was forced to withdraw on Friday — the abominable American Health Care Act — made such a cruel mockery of Trump’s expansive campaign promises.

A “populist” president who promised health insurance “for everybody” ended up supporting legislation that would have taken away coverage from 24 million people. Many, if not most, of the victims would have been working-class voters — the “forgotten Americans” Trump claimed to champion. Now that he has time, maybe he will actually read the bill (or have someone summarize it for him) and realize how truly awful it was.

You don’t have to be a policy wonk to recognize that replacing income-based subsidies with less generous across-the-board tax credits would mean a net transfer of resources from poorer people to wealthier people. That’s just fine with Ryan and the “mainstream” House Republicans who hung in there with legislation that Ronald Reagan or even Barry Goldwater would have considered extreme.

For members of the Freedom Caucus, however, the bill didn’t go nearly far enough. They wanted to strip away the requirement that health insurance policies cover eventualities such as maternity, hospitalization, emergency care, mental illness — basically, all the reasons anyone would need insurance in the first place. These ultra-radicals believe health care is like any other product and the free market should be allowed to work its magic. To them, it’s irrelevant that the question is not who buys the latest flat-screen television and who doesn’t, but who lives and who dies.

As Trump lobbied House Republicans to support the AHCA, according to The Post, he kept asking aides, “Is this really a good bill?” They assured him it was, but on some level, he must have known the truth was an emphatic no. What happened to those fabled Trumpian instincts?

The president let himself be convinced by Ryan that health care would be an easy win. That should make him wary of going down another garden path with a speaker who can’t even marshal his own chamber, let alone produce important legislation with a chance of making it through the Senate. Yet Trump seems ready to make the same mistake with tax reform.

Note to the president: If Ryan is saying “trust me on this one,” don’t.

The same dynamic is shaping up. House Republicans will all agree on tax cuts, just as they all agreed that the Affordable Care Act should be repealed. The Freedom Caucus, which can only be emboldened by its recent triumph, will make extreme demands. Ryan will accommodate many of them. The end result will be legislation that is more about ideology than policy. The wealthy will benefit enormously, the middle class hardly at all, and the working class will suffer.

Such a bill could never win 60 votes in the Senate. Only more modest changes that don’t balloon the deficit qualify for the “reconciliation” process under which Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) can pass legislation by simple majority — and if just three Republicans balk, even such a limited bill would fail.

Trump should wonder why someone on his staff isn’t explaining all of this to him and trying to come up with an appropriate strategy. Chief of Staff Reince Priebus and budget director Mick Mulvaney were supposed to know how to get things done in Washington. White House chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon reportedly tried to bully Freedom Caucus members, who instead seem to have stiffened their resolve. Advisers Jared Kushner and his wife, Trump’s daughter Ivanka, went skiing.

Meanwhile, Trump’s approval, as measured by Gallup, stood Monday at 36 percent — a stunning new low. The financial markets seem a bit shaky as investors worry about the administration’s competence. If this were a business, the chief executive would be reading up on Chapter 11.

During the campaign, Trump was nothing if not headstrong. Yet in office he has let others lead — and is getting nowhere. He could still change course. He could get rid of the sycophantic aides who spend so much time blaming each other. He could focus on parts of his agenda, such as infrastructure, that have popular support, including among Democrats.

But that would mean acknowledging his mistakes thus far. Don’t hold your breath.

Read more from Eugene Robinson’s archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook. You can also join him Tuesdays at 1 p.m. for a live Q&A.

Democrats Must Proclaim Trump Presidency Illegitimate

‘A stooge of the president of the United States’: Nancy Pelosi calls for Devin Nunes to step aside

By David Edwards

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) on Thursday accused House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-CA) of being a “stooge” for Donald Trump after he released information about foreign intelligence surveillance without first telling his Democratic colleagues.

In a press conference on Wednesday, Nunes revealed that intelligence agencies had incidentally intercepted communications from Trump and his associates while conducting surveillance of foreign targets. Nunes then went to the White House to personally brief the president, who said he felt “somewhat” vindicated by the revelations.

At a briefing with reporters on Thursday, Pelosi said that Nunes appeared to be a “willing stooge” of the president.

“He committed a stunt at the White House yesterday raising questions about Chairman Nunes’ impartiality,” Pelosi explained, noting that Nunes had been a part of the Trump transition team.

“The Republicans are grasping at straws,” she continued. “FBI Director Comey confirmed that President Obama did not wiretap President Trump, affirmed an investigation into links and coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the Trump campaign.”

According to Pelosi, Nunes made it necessary to move forward with an independent investigation because he had proven himself “a stooge for the president of the United States.”

“I think he had demonstrated very clearly that there is no way that there can be an impartial investigation under his leadership on that committee,” she insisted. “It speaks very clearly to the need for an outside independent commission.”

Republicans Are Afraid Trump Is Genuinely Nuts

By Robert Reich

I spent much of this past week in Washington – talking with friends still in government, former colleagues, high-ranking Democrats, a few Republican pundits, and some members of Congress from both sides of the aisle. It was my first visit to our nation’s capital since Trump became president.

My verdict:

1. Washington is more divided, angry, bewildered, and fearful – than I’ve ever seen it.

2. The angry divisions aren’t just Democrats versus Republicans. Rancor is also exploding inside the Republican Party.

3. Republicans (and their patrons in big business) no longer believe Trump will give them cover to do what they want to do. They’re becoming afraid Trump is genuinely nuts, and he’ll pull the party down with him.

4. Many Republicans are also angry at Paul Ryan, whose replacement bill for Obamacare is considered by almost everyone on Capitol Hill to be incredibly dumb.

5. I didn’t talk with anyone inside the White House, but several who have had dealings with it called it a cesspool of intrigue and fear. Apparently everyone working there hates and distrusts everyone else.

6. The Washington foreign policy establishment – both Republican and Democrat – is deeply worried about what’s happening to American foreign policy, and the worldwide perception of America being loony and rudderless. They think Trump is legitimizing far-right movements around the world.

7. Long-time civil servants are getting ready to bail. If they’re close to retirement they’re already halfway out the door. Many in their 30s and 40s are in panic mode.

8. Republican pundits think Bannon is even more unhinged than Trump, seeking to destroy democracy as we’ve known it.

9. Despite all this, no one I talked with thought a Trump impeachment likely, at least not any time soon – unless there’s a smoking gun showing Trump’s involvement in Russia’s intrusion into the election.

10. Many people asked, bewilderedly, “how did this [Trump] happen?” When I suggest it had a lot to do with the 35-year-long decline of incomes of the bottom 60 percent; the growing sense, ever since the Wall Street bailout, that the game is rigged; and the utter failure of both Republicans and Democrats to reverse these trends – they gave me blank stares.

Robert B. Reich has served in three national administrations, most recently as secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton. His latest book is "Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few." His website is www.robertreich.org

Advice To Democrats: Comey Has Given You Your Battle Plan On Gorsuch

Posted by Rude One

It doesn't get any easier than this, dear Democrats. You want something to rally around? You want something that can give you a principled stand against the nomination of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court? Here you go.

Today, FBI Director James "But Her Emails" Comey stated, in as plain a language as one could ask from a rat-faced ratfucker, the FBI is investigating "the nature of any links between individuals associated with the Trump campaign and the Russian government and whether there was any coordination between the campaign and Russia’s efforts."

Roll that around in your head for a moment. The FBI. Is investigating. Trump campaign. Russia. Coordination. Think about the fact that when the FBI was investigating Hillary Clinton, the Republican National Committee declared that it "should be disqualifying for anyone seeking the presidency, a job that is supposed to begin each morning with a top secret intelligence briefing."

Put aside any snark about Trump and his inability to sit through an intelligence briefing or having intelligence. Instead, ponder the idea that the Republican Party declared Clinton unqualified for the presidency because of an FBI investigation. Not the conclusion of it. Not the finding of any criminal activity. The investigation, which, to be as fair as possible to bastards, does seem suspicious as hell in any situation.

Also today, the confirmation hearing for Supreme Court nominee Gorsuch got under way in the Senate Judiciary Committee. Under normal circumstances, Gorsuch would just be a garden variety conservative cockknob, but these are not normal circumstances since Merrick Garland should have been confirmed last year.

But, as we know, the GOP is made up of syphilitic lepers who spread their diseases to democracy every chance they get with their scabby genitals. So they created a new rule: No Supreme Court confirmations in the last year before an election. It makes no sense at all. And Democrats should have gone to the motherfuckin' barricades on that, but, alas, they did not, because they are Democrats. So here we are with Gorsuch.

So here's a chance at redemption, dear, dumb, defeated Democrats in the Senate. A simple plan for a vile time. It goes like this: You cannot consider the Supreme Court nominations of Donald Trump until he is cleared by the FBI (and any other U.S. intelligence agency investigating him) of possible collusion with a foreign power to affect the presidential election. The Gorsuch hearings should be shut down until that time. In fact, you should say that you don't believe anyone nominated for a lifetime appointment by Trump should be considered by the Senate until the investigation is done, but you don't have the filibuster to use on other positions.

Go even further. State that anyone who does believe that Trump's SCOTUS nominees should be confirmed is, in essence, also colluding with the Russians, if the FBI discovers Trump has done so. Ask GOP senators if they're willing to take that risk.

See how easy this is? Take the playing field away from the Republicans. Force them to react. Force them to own Trump. Force them to eat his failure and choke on his corruption. Democrats have a stronger anti-confirmation case now than Republicans ever did with Obama.

At the end of the day, they're probably gonna nuke the SCOTUS filibuster rule if Democrats don't roll over and offer to let the GOP fuck them. So make it hurt. Make them just this side of traitors and make them fuckin' sweat awaiting the outcome of the investigation to see if they're nudged across the line.

All you gotta do is stop fucking colluding, too, Democrats.

Young Americans: Most see Trump as an illegitimate president

By LAURIE KELLMAN and EMILY SWANSON, Associated Press

WASHINGTON — Jermaine Anderson keeps going back to the same memory of Donald Trump, then a candidate for president of the United States, referring to some Mexican immigrants as rapists and murderers.

"You can't be saying that (if) you're the president," says Anderson, a 21 year old student from Coconut Creek, Florida.

That Trump is undeniably the nation's 45th president doesn't sit easily with young Americans like Anderson who are the nation's increasingly diverse electorate of the future, according to a new poll.

A majority of young adults — 57 percent — see Trump's presidency as illegitimate, including about three-quarters of blacks and large majorities of Latinos and Asians, the GenForward poll found.

GenForward is a poll of adults age 18 to 30 conducted by the Black Youth Project at the University of Chicago with the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

A slim majority of young whites in the poll, 53 percent, consider Trump a legitimate president, but even among that group 55 percent disapprove of the job he's doing, according to the survey.

"That's who we voted for. And obviously America wanted him more than Hillary Clinton," said Rebecca Gallardo, a 30 year old nursing student from Kansas City, Missouri, who voted for Trump.

Trump's legitimacy as president was questioned earlier this year by U.S. Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga.: "I think the Russians participated in helping this man get elected. And they helped destroy the candidacy of Hillary Clinton."

Trump routinely denies that and says he captured the presidency in large part by winning states such as Michigan and Wisconsin that Clinton may have taken for granted.

Overall, just 22 percent of young adults approve of the job he is doing as president, while 62 percent disapprove.

Trump's rhetoric as a candidate and his presidential decisions have done much to keep the question of who belongs in America atop the news, though he's struggling to accomplish some key goals.

Powered by supporters chanting, "build the wall," Trump has vowed to erect a barrier along the southern U.S. border and make Mexico pay for it — which Mexico refuses to do. Federal judges in three states have blocked Trump's executive orders to ban travel to the U.S. from seven — then six — majority-Muslim nations.

In Honolulu, U.S. District Judge Derrick Watson this week cited "significant and unrebutted evidence of religious animus" behind the revised travel ban, citing Trump's own words calling for "a complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States."

And yes, Trump did say in his campaign announcement speech on June 6, 2015: "When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best ...They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people." He went further in subsequent statements, later telling CNN: "Some are good and some are rapists and some are killers."

It's extraordinary rhetoric for the leader of a country where by around 2020, half of the nation's children will be part of a minority race or ethnic group, the Census Bureau projects. Non-Hispanic whites are expected to be a minority by 2044.

Of all of Trump's tweets and rhetoric, the statements about Mexicans are the ones to which Anderson returns. He says Trump's business background on paper is impressive enough to qualify him for the presidency. But he suggests that's different than Trump earning legitimacy as president.
 
© The Associated Press Graphic shows results of GenForward poll on younger Americans attitudes toward Donald Trump and his presidency.

 "I'm thinking, he's saying that most of the people in the world who are raping and killing people are the immigrants. That's not true," said Anderson, whose parents are from Jamaica.

Megan Desrochers, a 21 year old student from Lansing, Michigan, says her sense of Trump's illegitimacy is more about why he was elected.

"I just think it was kind of a situation where he was voted in based on his celebrity status verses his ethics," she said, adding that she is not necessarily against Trump's immigration policies.

The poll participants said in interviews that they don't necessarily vote for one party's candidates over another's, a prominent tendency among young Americans, experts say. And in the survey, neither party fares especially strongly.

Just a quarter of young Americans have a favorable view of the Republican Party, and six in 10 have an unfavorable view. Majorities of young people across racial and ethnic lines hold negative views of the GOP.

The Democratic Party performs better, but views aren't overwhelmingly positive. Young people are more likely to have a favorable than an unfavorable view of the Democratic Party by a 47 percent to 36 percent margin. But just 14 percent say they have a strongly favorable view of the Democrats.

Views of the Democratic Party are most favorable among young people of color. Roughly six in 10 blacks, Asians and Latinos hold positive views of the party. Young whites are somewhat more likely to have unfavorable than favorable views, 47 percent to 39 percent.

As for Trump, eight in 10 young people think he is doing poorly in terms of the policies he's put forward and seven in 10 have negative views of his presidential demeanor.

"I do not like him as a person," Gallardo says of Trump. She nonetheless voted for Trump because she didn't trust Clinton. "I felt like there wasn't much choice."
___
The poll of 1,833 adults age 18-30 was conducted on Feb. 16 through March 6 using a sample drawn from the probability-based GenForward panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. young adult population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 4 percentage points.

The survey was paid for by the Black Youth Project at the University of Chicago, using grants from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and the Ford Foundation.

Respondents were first selected randomly using address-based sampling methods, and later interviewed online or by phone.

Rachel Maddow Terrifies Trump By Warning That The Tax Return Leaked To Her Won’t Be The Last

Rachel Maddow had a terrifying message for Donald Trump. The 2005 tax return that was leaked to her may be the first, but it won't be the last.

By Jason Easley



Maddow said, “The greater concern. The worry that this president may be financially beholden to an individual, to an institution, to a country, and now that he’s president we won’t know if he tries to use the resources and power of our country to pay off that entity to whom he is beholden. We can’t know any of that without getting his tax returns. That’s why presidents release their tax returns. That’s why there will continue to be unrelenting pressure to find Donald Trump’s tax returns, to expose Donald Trump’s tax returns, and that pressure will remain every single day that he is president and until he releases them that pressure will never let up, and that’s why somebody has decided to leak this portion of his 2005 tax return, which is how and why we got it tonight, and I am sure it is only the start, but it’s a start.”

The news isn’t what is on Trump’s 1040 from 12 years ago. The big story is that a tax return was published. Every news organization in the United States and others around the world have been trying to get their hands on Trump’s tax returns.

The fact that somebody was able to get one of Trump’s returns out to the public suggests that there are more of them out there, and it is only a matter of time before others reveal the secrets that this president has worked so hard to keep hidden.

Maddow got a 1040, but eventually, a whole tax return or returns will be made public. Trump isn’t worried about the details of what Rachel Maddow made public. What terrifies Trump is that his tax return secrecy has been shattered and the real damage is yet to come.

INDIVISIBLE

A PRACTICAL GUIDE FOR RESISTING THE TRUMP AGENDA

Former congressional staffers reveal best practices for making Congress listen.

Donald Trump is the biggest popular-vote loser in history to ever call himself President. In spite of the fact that he has no mandate, he will attempt to use his congressional majority to reshape America in his own racist, authoritarian, and corrupt image. If progressives are going to stop this, we must stand indivisibly opposed to Trump and the Members of Congress (MoCs) who would do his bidding. Together, we have the power to resist — and we have the power to win.

We know this because we’ve seen it before. The authors of this guide are former congressional staffers who witnessed the rise of the Tea Party. We saw these activists take on a popular president with a mandate for change and a supermajority in Congress. We saw them organize locally and convince their own MoCs to reject President Obama’s agenda. Their ideas were wrong, cruel, and tinged with racism— and they won.

We believe that protecting our values, our neighbors, and ourselves will require mounting a similar resistance to the Trump agenda — but a resistance built on the values of inclusion, tolerance,
and fairness. Trump is not popular. He does not have a mandate. He does not have large congressional majorities. If a small minority in the Tea Party could stop President Obama, then we the majority can stop a petty tyrant named Trump.

To this end, the following chapters offer a step-by-step guide for individuals, groups, and organizations looking to replicate the Tea Party’s success in getting Congress to listen to a small, vocal, dedicated group of constituents. The guide is intended to be equally useful for stiffening Democratic spines and weakening pro-Trump Republican resolve.

We believe that the next four years depend on Americans across the country standing indivisible against the Trump agenda. We believe that buying into false promises or accepting partial concessions will only further empower Trump to victimize us and our neighbors. We hope that this guide will provide those who share that belief with useful tools to make Congress listen.

https://www.indivisibleguide.com/web 

'I Might As Well Have Not Voted': Details Of GOP Health Plan Leave Trump Voter Appalled

By Brad Reed

Donald Trump this week signaled his support for the House Republicans’ new health care bill — but it looks like that legislation is going over like a lead balloon with his base.

Not only are the Trump diehards at Breitbart News bashing the plan as “Obamacare 2.0,” but even some casual voters are worried about the president’s plan.

ABC News this week talked with North Carolina resident Martha Brawley, a 55 year old woman who cast a ballot for the first time in her life for Donald Trump. Brawley says that she voted for the president on the hopes that he could bring down the cost of health care — but she’s been appalled so far by what she’s seen from the Republican Congress.

“I voted for Trump hoping that he would change the insurance so I could get good health care,” she told ABC News. “I might as well have not voted.”

Brawley was particularly upset when she learned that, under Trumpcare, she would receive a paltry $3,500 tax credit to buy insurance. At the moment, she gets a federal subsidy of around $8,688 to buy insurance from Obamacare.

“All these people who talk in politics have insurance,” she told ABC News. “People like me don’t.”

Bernie Sanders rips ‘phony billionaire’ Donald Trump: ‘We have a president who is a pathological liar’

By Travis Gettys      

Bernie Sanders (Good Morning America)

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) accused President Donald Trump of lying in an effort to undermine democracy and gather authoritarian powers for himself.

“What he wants, I think, is to end up as leader of a nation which has moved in a significant degree toward authoritarianism where the president of the United States has extraordinary powers, far more so than our Constitution has provided for or the values of the American people support,” Sanders told The Guardian.

Sanders pointed to Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX), the chairman of the House Science Committee, who urged Americans to get “unvarnished” news directly from the president instead of trusting the media.

“That is unprecedented in American history,” Sanders said. “George Bush was a very conservative president, I opposed him every single day. But George Bush did not operate outside of mainstream American political values.”

Sanders faulted the Democratic Party for ignoring the economic displacement of the working class to focus on Wall Street and liberal elites, which he said allowed a “phony billionaire” to win election to the White House.

“There needs to be a fundamental acknowledgement that the model of the Democratic party has been a horrific failure — no ifs, buts and maybes,” Sanders said. “Democrats have lost over 900 legislative seats in states all over this country. There are states where there is virtually no Democratic party at all. When an election takes place the Democrats can’t even put up a candidate for the US Senate.

That’s how pathetic it is.”

Those failures have left the Republican Party as the last defense against Trump’s authoritarian ambitions, Sanders said.

“These are very scary times for the people of the United States and, because the Unites States is the most powerful country on Earth, for the whole word,” he said. “The bad news, the very bad news is that we have a president who is a pathological liar.”

'A Low, Low Moment For Washington' | Morning Blow | MSNBC

Over the weekend in a Saturday tweet storm, Trump accused President Obama of tapping his phones during the 'sacred election process' and saying it was 'Nixon/Watergate.'

Yes, We DO Think You ARE Stupid

By NanceGreggs

I have often seen Democrats being chastised, lectured, even vilified for stating that Republican voters are stupid.

You think that we think you are dumber-than-dumb. And the fact is WE DO think exactly that. We don’t call you brainless idiots in order to be provocative. We don’t refer to you as dumb-asses because we are determined to anger you. We don’t label you as mindless, low-IQ voters in an effort to be divisive or combative.

We do it because the evidence is in – and it invariably points to the fact that you are every bit as undeniably stupid as we think you are.

The election of Donald Trump is the perfect case in point.

You were stupid enough to vote for a man who has always outsourced all of his own manufacturing jobs, because you believed he would bring YOUR outsourced job back.

You were stupid enough to listen to your “Christian” pastors when they told you a thrice-married, self-proclaimed pussy-grabber is an upstanding moral man, chosen by God himself to lead a nation.

You were stupid enough to think a man who tweets incoherent nonsense was intelligent enough to run an incredibly complex government in an increasingly complicated world.

You were stupid enough to support a man who stated outright that he intends to take your healthcare coverage away from you.

You were stupid enough to believe that a billionaire – who has never in his entire life done anything for anyone other than himself – had suddenly become a champion of those of you struggling to make ends meet.

You were stupid enough to elect a man who has a very long history of cheating hard-working Americans – people like yourselves – out of their fees for materials delivered, and services rendered.

We Democrats are not – contrary to your stupidly-held beliefs – all over-educated Ph.D.s who sip $24 lattes between Mensa meetings. We are not ‘elitists’ who spend our time looking down our noses at the less educated, especially in view of the fact that many of us are no better educated, nor financially well-off, than you are.

The difference between us is that we Democrats look beyond the political rhetoric in order to find the facts, while you simply swallow whatever bullshit is spewed by FOX-News, or Rush Limbaugh – even Alex Jones. We have the common sense to know that in today’s world, those facts are as close as a mouse-click away. We understand that the truth is out there, if only you have the minimal intellectual capacity it takes to find it.

So, yes, we DO think you’re stupid – because you are. You demonstrate it daily. You are the people who think Obama was president on 9/11, the people who believe that illegals working 12-hour days in the fields are stealing your six-figure-per-annum jobs, the people who believe that the Bowling Green Massacre actually happened.

What else are we to think, other than that you are unbelievably, mind-bogglingly, beyond-all-imagining, STUPID? How are we supposed to ignore your incredible, self-imposed ignorance? Why should we pretend that people who are still complaining about Obama’s botched response to Katrina (which happened more than three years before he was in office) are anything more than dumber-than-dumb ignoramuses who lack the necessary skill to interpret something as complicated as a calendar?

Look, the truth is YOU ARE STUPID. And what’s worse, you are actually proud of being stupid. So don’t blame us for pointing out what you yourselves have gone out of your way to make obvious. Don't wave your stupidity around like a neon flag if you don't want anyone to notice it. Don't regurgitate quotes from people proven to be liars if you want to be perceived as people capable of independent thought - or even common sense.

There is, of course, a way to stop being called stupid. You can always try NOT being stupid.
It’s so crazy, it just might work.

Not My President's Day: Thousands protest at anti-Trump rallies across US

Thousands of people in cities around the country turned out in protest of President Trump on Monday — a federal holiday that organizers are calling “Not My President’s Day.”

https://www.bing.com/search?q=not+my+president+protest&qs=AS&pq=not+my+president&sk=LS3AS3&sc=8-16&cvid=5B0AC880CA8A480CB8887299AF344746&FORM=QBRE&sp=8 

12 Signs That Trump Is Guilty As Sin

http://occupydemocrats.com/2017/02/19/criminal-defense-attorney-just-revealed-12-signs-trump-guilty-sin/