Foreign Diplomats Call Trump A Laughing Stock Who Is Obsessed With Obama

According to a new report, foreign diplomats visiting the United States are less than impressed with Donald Trump. In fact, they can’t seem to stop laughing about how pathetic he really is, and about the fact that he won’t shut up about his predecessor, Barack Obama.



When other countries are laughing, we should probably reevaluate our choices.

According to a new report, European diplomats do not have a very flattering image of Donald Trump. In fact, according to these European diplomats, who interviewed with BuzzFeed on the condition of anonymity, they actually view Donald Trump as most Europeans do, as a complete laughingstock. The latest available polls show us that 79% of people living in Europe do not trust Donald Trump. They do not think he is an effective leader, and they think he is an embarrassment for the United States, and as a U.S. citizen, you're absolutely right. We agree with you on this.

But the fact that these diplomats, who do have the job of having to meet with Donald Trump, having to work with him when he goes on these overseas trips, the fact that they see him as a laughingstock is not anything that people in the United States should be laughing at. That is a very dangerous situation when nobody among your ally countries respects your leader, that they do not view him as a very serious person, and more important as the interview states, they don't view him as an intelligent person. One of the diplomats said that they actually play a form of word bingo when the president is around because he always uses the same words, over and over, like it's great, it's very, very good, it's tremendous. They say he has such a limited vocabulary, that is one of the sources of ridicule among the other diplomats.

Furthermore, and one of the most dangerous about him they said was that the man is clearly obsessed with President Obama. During meetings, they said Trump would not want to debate issues. He would ask if it was something Obama had supported. If the answer was yes, Obama supported it, Trump would blindly and blankly say, then I do not support it. No debate, no discussion, no understanding at all of what they were actually talking about. He just wanted to be opposed to anything that Barack Obama was for, and that is one of the biggest problems that they see over in Europe. Donald Trump is too obsessed with Obama to be an effective leader.

According to these diplomats, it appears that Donald Trump's only policy goals for the United States are to undo the accomplishments of Barack Obama. And to be honest, from what we've seen so far coming out of the Oval Office, that does appear to be his only agenda. He doesn't care about creating jobs. He doesn't care about protecting the environment or anything having to do with anything related to Americans. He just wants to roll back every single thing President Obama did so that four, eight years down the road, Obama can't look at this country and say, oh, that was the program I put in place, because Donald Trump wants to destroy it all.

And he's not only destroying things over here in the United States, as we see from this story. He's also destroying our image that Barack Obama had rebuilt amongst our allies in Europe, and maybe that's Trump's plan, since everyone in Europe really seemed to like Barack Obama, especially after eight years of Bush and our image overseas declined tremendously. Barack Obama repaired that. So I guess Donald Trump destroying that is just another part of his let's undo all of Obama's accomplishments policy.

Trump Just Helped Prove How Fake His Twitter Following Is

This is what happens when your biggest fans are bots.

Like pretty much everything else about his presidency, Donald Trump’s Twitter following is a lie. His social media fan base is mostly made of fake accounts; his legion of followers overwhelmingly comprised of automated bots.

This weekend, Trump inadvertently reminded us how phony his social media popularity is when he shined a light on what he erroneously believed was an adoring supporter. That Trump booster turned out be a Twitter bot—just one of the millions of fake accounts that exist solely to bolster the popularity of the most unpopular president in American history.

On the heels of the president basically catfishing himself, Twitter has since suspended the fake account and a slew of others just like it.

http://www.alternet.org/media/trump-just-helped-prove-how-fake-his-twitter-following

How Racist Can The White House Get? (Answer: Very)

Posted by Rude One

The last couple of days have been banner ones for racists of just about every stripe, from backwoods yahoo country fucks to ostensibly educated white nationalist shit crumbs, from pandering politicians to true believers. Let's just run it down:

1. The Department of Justice is exploring whether the federal government should be "suing universities over affirmative action admissions policies deemed to discriminate against white applicants." It's as if they believe that diversity on college campuses is a bad thing, probably because it makes people more sympathetic to people of other races. And how can you have a race war if that happens?

2. President Donald Trump announced his support for the RAISE Act, which is an anodyne acronym masking a shitty policy. It looks to cut in half the number of legal immigrants coming into the country, and it emphasizes skilled workers who can speak English. Oh, and only spouses and children can come over with immigrants.

When nutzoid hate-filled jizz goblin Stephen Miller, a senior policy advisor and winner of "Man Who Most Looks Like a Star Trek Alien" was asked about the racist implications of the proposal, he went into an outrage froth that coated the gathered reporters in a glistening film of saliva. It reached a spittle-flecked climax when Miller attacked CNN's Jim Acosta for daring to suggest that one purpose of the bill might be to bring in more white people, saying that "it reveals your cosmopolitan bias to a shocking degree." Fuck's sake, "cosmopolitan" means you give a shit about the world. The opposite of "cosmopolitan" is, more or less, "xenophobic." Or it's just an anti-Semitic dog whistle (which is extra weird since Miller is Jewish). Either way, between that and a bizarro attack on the meaning of the Statue of Liberty, it was a fucking train wreck of an appearance.

3. The Washington Post printed transcripts of Trump's late January phone calls with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto and Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. While they are masterpieces of fuckery, dickishness, and doltishness, it's also worth pointing out how fucking openly racist Trump is willing to go when talking about refugees.

When Turnbull presses Trump on honoring a deal on at least vetting refugees to possibly take them into the United States, Trump goes twitchy with paranoia. He knocks Cubans: "You remember the Mariel boat lift, where Castro let everyone out of prison and Jimmy Carter accepted them with open arms. These were brutal people." Yeah, see only 2% of the 125,000 Cubans who came here in 1980 were deemed criminals who needed to be deported. The rest fucking made Miami what it is today. (Oddly, Miller brought up the Mariel boat lift in his remarks yesterday. These Trumpers are consistent in their assholery.)

Then, after Turnbull insists that the U.S. live up to its obligations, something Trump is well-known not to give a flying rat fuck about, the president says of the refugees who have been living in horrific conditions on islands off Australia, "I hate taking these people. I guarantee you they are bad. That is why they are in prison right now. They are not going to be wonderful people who go on to work for the local milk people...maybe you should let them out of prison." Who knows where all these milk jobs are, but Trump equates "refugee camp" with "prison," which would probably shock a lot of the little children who are there.

This shit is so blatant it'd make a robed KKK member say, "Whoa, a little obvious there, fella."

Look, we know Trump is racist. We knew it for years, from the Central Park Five to birtherism to the Muslim travel ban. It has been one of his most consistent traits. And we know that Trump has surrounded himself with racists, with people who are directly connected to white nationalist groups. And we know that Trump's supporters are racist (yeah, you are, fuck off).

And now we're seeing the policy implications of that. Trump used to ask various non-white groups, "What the hell do you have to lose?" in electing him.

It's pretty clear that the answer is "a future."

The Making Of Donald Trump - Interview With David Cay Johnston

Randi Rhodes interviews David Cay Johnston, investigative journalist and author, a specialist in economics and tax issues, and winner of the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for Beat Reporting about his book - The Making of Donald Trump - Get the book here - every purchase supports the show: http://amzn.to/2cnN0z9

For the full show, get a commercial-free audio podcast at RandiRhodes.com and please subscribe to Randi's YouTube channel!




Randi Rhodes Number-one ranked progressive radio talk show host, political commentator, entertainer and writer. The Randi Rhodes Show, was broadcast nationally on Air America Radio, and Premiere Radio Networks from 2004–2014. Rhodes, represents aggressively independent media.

The Miami Herald described her as "a chain-smoking bottle blonde, part Joan Rivers, part shock jock Howard Stern, and part Saturday Night Live’s ‘Coffee Talk’ Lady. But mostly, she's her rude, crude, loud, brazen, gleeful self."

Rhodes and her show won numerous awards for journalism and broadcasting, including Radio Ink’s Most Influential Woman, Radio Ink’s Most Influential Women’s list (multiple years), TALKERS magazine’s Woman of the Year, and the Judy Jarvis Memorial Award for Contributions to the Talk Industry by a Woman.

Trump Taking Another THREE WEEKS Off

Hypocrite isn’t a strong enough word for whatever the fuck Trump is… Cenk Uygur, host of The Young Turks, breaks it down.



"Donald Trump recently called the White House a dump, and maybe that is why he is taking an almost three week vacation from “the swamp.”

Trump will begin his first “official” vacation since taking office Friday by heading to his private golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey. According to the Associated Press, the reason behind the vacation may be because the White House West Wing needs to replace their 27 year old heating and cooling system, which would require all residents to vacate during that work.

The planned 17 day vacation is receiving a lot of attention because of Trump’s past remarks on vacations. Most recently he told GOP senators that they shouldn’t take an August recess and “we shouldn’t leave town” until they fix the health care system, something that has not happened yet.

Read more here: https://www.mediaite.com/online/low-energy-man-announces-three-week-vacation/

Trump 'personally dictated' false statement about son's meeting with Russian lawyer

Trump personally dictated a statement that was issued after revelations that Donald Trump Jr. met with a Russian lawyer during the 2016 election. The Washington Post's Philip Rucker and Carol D. Leonnig explain.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-dictated-sons-misleading-statement-on-meeting-with-russian-lawyer/2017/07/31/04c94f96-73ae-11e7-8f39-eeb7d3a2d304_story.html 

The Past 5 GOP Presidents Have Used Fraud And Treason To Steer Themselves To Electoral Victory

By Thom Hartmann / AlterNet

People are wondering out loud about the parallels between today’s Republican Party and organized crime, and whether “Teflon Don” Trump will remain unscathed through his many scandals, ranging from interactions with foreign oligarchs to killing tens of thousands of Americans by denying them healthcare to stepping up the destruction of our environment and public lands.

  

History suggests – even if treason can be demonstrated – that, as long as he holds onto the Republican Party (and Fox News), he’ll survive it intact. And he won’t be the first Republican president to commit high crimes to get and stay in office. 

In fact, Eisenhower was the last legitimately elected Republican president we’ve had in this country.

Since Dwight Eisenhower left the presidency in 1961, six different Republicans have occupied the Oval Office.

And every single one of them - from Richard Nixon to Donald Trump - have been illegitimate - ascending to the highest office in the land not through small-D democratic elections - but instead through fraud and treason.

(And today’s GOP-controlled Congress is arguably just as corrupt and illegitimate, acting almost entirely within the boundaries set by an organized group of billionaires.) 

Let’s start at the beginning with Richard Nixon.

In 1968 - President Lyndon Johnson was desperately trying to end the Vietnam war.

But Richard Nixon knew that if the war continued - it would tarnish Democrat (and Vice President) Hubert Humphrey’s chances of winning the 1968 election.

So Nixon sent envoys from his campaign to talk to South Vietnamese leaders to encourage them not to attend an upcoming peace talk in Paris.

Nixon promised South Vietnam’s corrupt politicians that he would give them a richer deal when he was President than LBJ could give them then.

LBJ found out about this political maneuver to prolong the Vietnam war just 3 days before the 1968 election. He phoned the Republican Senate leader Everett Dirksen – here’s an excerpt (you can listen to the entire conversation here):

President Johnson: 
Some of our folks, including some of the old China lobby, are going to the Vietnamese embassy and saying please notify the [South Vietnamese] president that if he'll hold out 'til November the second they could get a better deal. Now, I'm reading their hand, Everett. I don't want to get this in the campaign.

And they oughtn't to be doin' this. This is treason.

Sen. Dirksen: I know.

Those tapes were only released by the LBJ library in the past decade, and that’s Richard Nixon that Lyndon Johnson was accusing of treason.

But by then - Nixon’s plan had worked.

South Vietnam boycotted the peace talks - the war continued - and Nixon won the White House thanks to it. As a result, additional tens of thousands of American soldiers, and hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese civilians, died as a result of Nixon’s treason.

  

And Nixon was never held to account for it.

Gerald Ford was the next Republican.

After Nixon left office the same way he entered it - by virtue of breaking the law - Gerald Ford took over.

Ford was never elected to the White House (he was appointed to replace VP Spiro Agnew, after Agnew was indicted for decades of taking bribes), and thus would never have been President had it not been for Richard Nixon’s treason.

The third was Ronald Reagan, elected in 1980.

He won thanks to a little something called the October Surprise - when his people sabotaged then-President Jimmy Carter’s negotiations to release American hostages in Iran.

According to Iran’s then-president, Reagan’s people promised the Iranians that if they held off on releasing the American hostages until just after the election - then Reagan would give them a sweet weapons deal.

In 1980 Carter thought he had reached a deal with newly-elected Iranian President Abdolhassan Bani-Sadr over the release of the fifty-two hostages held by radical students at the American Embassy in Tehran.

Bani-Sadr was a moderate and, as he explained in an editorial for The Christian Science Monitor earlier this year, had successfully run for President on the popular position of releasing the hostages:

"I openly opposed the hostage-taking throughout the election campaign.... I won the election with over 76 percent of the vote.... Other candidates also were openly against hostage-taking, and overall, 96 percent of votes in that election were given to candidates who were against it [hostage-taking]."

Carter was confident that with Bani-Sadr's help, he could end the embarrassing hostage crisis that had been a thorn in his political side ever since it began in November of 1979. But Carter underestimated the lengths his opponent in the 1980 Presidential election, California Governor Ronald Reagan, would go to win an election.

Behind Carter's back, the Reagan campaign worked out a deal with the leader of Iran's radical faction - Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini - to keep the hostages in captivity until after the 1980 Presidential election.

This was nothing short of treason. The Reagan campaign's secret negotiations with Khomeini - the so-called "October Surprise" - sabotaged Carter and Bani-Sadr's attempts to free the hostages. And as Bani-Sadr told The Christian Science Monitor in March of 2013:

After arriving in France [in 1981], I told a BBC reporter that I had left Iran to expose the symbiotic relationship between Khomeinism and Reaganism.

Ayatollah Khomeini and Ronald Reagan had organized a clandestine negotiation, later known as the “October Surprise,” which prevented the attempts by myself and then-US President Jimmy Carter to free the hostages before the 1980 US presidential election took place. The fact that they were not released tipped the results of the election in favor of Reagan.

And Reagan’s treason - just like Nixon’s treason - worked perfectly.

The Iran hostage crisis continued and torpedoed Jimmy Carter's re-election hopes.

And the same day Reagan took the oath of office - almost to the minute, by way of Iran’s acknowledging the deal - the American hostages in Iran were released.

And for that, Reagan began selling the Iranians weapons and spare parts in 1981, and continued until he was busted for it in 1986, producing the so-called "Iran Contra" scandal.

But, like Nixon, Reagan was never held to account for the criminal and treasonous actions that brought him to office.

After Reagan - Bush senior was elected - but like Gerry Ford - Bush was really only President because he served as Vice President under Reagan.

If the October Surprise hadn’t hoodwinked voters in 1980 - you can bet Bush senior would never have been elected in 1988. That's four illegitimate Republican presidents.

And that brings us to George W. Bush, the man who was given the White House by five right-wing justices on the Supreme Court.

In the Bush v. Gore Supreme Court decision in 2000 that stopped the Florida recount and thus handed George W. Bush the presidency - Justice Antonin Scalia wrote in his opinion:

"The counting of votes ... does in my view threaten irreparable harm to petitioner [George W. Bush], and to the country, by casting a cloud upon what he [Bush] claims to be the legitimacy of his election."

Apparently, denying the presidency to Al Gore, the guy who actually won the most votes in Florida, did not constitute "irreparable harm" to Scalia or the media.

And apparently it wasn't important that Scalia’s son worked for the law firm that was defending George W. Bush before the high court (thus no Scalia recusal).

Just like it wasn't important to mention that Justice Clarence Thomas's wife worked on the Bush transition team and was busy accepting resumes from people who would serve in the Bush White House if her husband stopped the recount in Florida...which he did.  (No Thomas recusal, either.)

And more than a year after the election - a consortium of newspapers including The Washington Post, The New York Times, and USA Today did their own recount in Florida - manually counting every vote in a process that took almost a year - and concluded that Al Gore did indeed win the presidency in 2000.

As the November 12th, 2001 article in The New York Times read:

“If all the ballots had been reviewed under any of seven single standards and combined with the results of an examination of overvotes, Mr. Gore would have won.”

That little bit of info was slipped into the seventeenth paragraph of the Times story on purpose so that it would attract as little attention as possible around the nation.

Why? because the 9/11 attacks had just happened - and journalists feared that burdening Americans with the plain truth that George W. Bush actually lost the election would further hurt a nation that was already in crisis.

And none of that even considered that Bush could only have gotten as close to Gore as he did because his brother, Florida Governor Jeb Bush, had ordered his Secretary of State, Kathrine Harris, to purge at least 57,000 mostly-Black voters from the state’s rolls just before the election.

So for the third time in 4 decades - Republicans took the White House under illegitimate electoral circumstances.  Even President Carter was shocked by the brazenness of that one.

And Jeb Bush and the GOP were never held to account for that crime against democracy.

Most recently, in 2016, Kris Kobach and Republican Secretaries of State across the nation used Interstate Crosscheck to purge millions of legitimate voters – most people of color – from the voting rolls just in time for the Clinton/Trump election.  

Millions of otherwise valid American voters were denied their right to vote because they didn’t own the requisite ID – a modern-day poll-tax that’s spread across every Republican state with any consequential black, elderly, urban, or college-student population (all groups less likely to have a passport or drivers’ license).

Donald Trump still lost the popular vote by nearly 3 million votes, but came to power through an electoral college designed to keep slavery safe in colonial America.

You can only wonder how much better off America would be if 6 Republican Presidents hadn't stolen or inherited a stolen White House.

In fact - the last legitimate Republican President - Dwight Eisenhower - was unlike any other Republican president since.

He ran for the White House on a platform of peace - that he would end the Korean War.

This from one of his TV campaign ads:

“The nation, haunted by the stalemate in Korea, looks to Eisenhower. Eisenhower knows how to deal with the Russians. He has met Europe leaders, has got them working with us. Elect the number one man for the number one job of our time. November 4th vote for peace. Vote for Eisenhower.”

Two of his campaign slogans were "I like Ike" and "Vote For Peace, Vote For Eisenhower".

Ike was a moderate Republican who stood up for working people - who kept tax rates on the rich at 91 percent - and made sure that the middle class in America was protected by FDR's New Deal policies.

As he told his brother Edgar in 1954 in a letter:

"Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history."

And Eisenhower was right - the only way Republicans have been able to win the presidency since he left office in 1961 has been by outright treason, a criminal fraud involving conflicted members of the Supreme Court, or by being vice-president under an already-illegitimate president.

And that's where we are today, dealing with the aftermath of all these Republican crimes and six illegitimate Republican presidents stacking the Supreme Court and the federal judiciary.

And this doesn’t even begin to tell the story of how the Republican majority in the senate represents 36 million fewer Americans than do the Democrats. Or how in most elections in past decades, Democrats have gotten more votes for the House of Representatives, but Republicans have controlled it because of gerrymandering.  

This raises serious questions about the legitimacy of the modern Republican Party itself. 

They work hand-in-glove with a group of right-wing billionaires and billionaire-owned or dominated media outlets like Fox and “conservative” TV and radio outlets across the nation, along with a very well-funded network of right wing websites.

  

The Koch Network’s various groups, for example, have more money, more offices, and more staff than the Republican Party itself. Three times more employees and twice the budget, in fact. Which raises the question: which is the dog, and which is the tail?

And, as we’ve seen so vividly in the “debate” about healthcare this year, the Republicans, like Richard Nixon, are not encumbered by the need to tell the truth.

Whether it’s ending trade deals, bringing home jobs, protecting Social Security and Medicaid, or saving our public lands and environment – virtually every promise that Trump ran and won on is being broken. Meanwhile, the oligarchs continue to pressure Republican senators to vote their way.

Meanwhile, a public trust that has taken 240 years to build is being destroyed, as public lands, regulatory agencies, and our courts are handed off to oligarchs and transnational corporations to exploit or destroy.

The Trump and Republican campaign of 2016, Americans are now discovering, was nearly all lies, well-supported by a vast right-wing media machine and a timid, profit-obsessed “mainstream” corporate media.  Meanwhile, it seemed that all the Democrats could say was, “The children are watching!”

  

Fraud, treason, and lies have worked well for the GOP for half a century.

Thus, the Democrats are right to now fine-tune their message to the people.  But in addition to “A Better Deal,” they may want to consider adding to their agenda a solid RICO investigation into the GOP and the oligarchs who fund it.

It’s way past time to stop the now-routine Republican practice of using treason, lies, and crime to gain and hold political power.

Thom Hartmann is a talk-show host and author of over 25 books in print.

Cartoon Roundup

How Much Degradation Can We Stand? The Most Embarrassing Things Trump Said In Three Speeches

Posted by Rude One

Donald Trump, a man who wouldn't know honor if it bit his ass and screamed, "I'm honor," gave a speech to the annual Boy Scout Jamboree. During it, he unzipped his fly and pulled out his little dick, stretched it until it was near ripping and said, "Check out that dick, boys. Not bad. Not bad, if I say so myself. And you know I do." When he wasn't shaking his dick at the children, he was making jokes like he was starring in Hell's version of Catch a Rising Star, riffing and then stepping away from the microphone and swinging his Yeti-like arms for emphasis. It was like watching a brain-damaged ape trying to imitate Rodney Dangerfield.

The next night, last night, Trump had another one of his Nuremberg Rallies (yeah, I'm comparing him to Hitler - Do we have to wait until he's gassing people to do that?), this time in Ohio. An asshole in defeat, he is a throbbing, distended sphincter in victory. So he dropped his pants in front of the gathered 6,000 people and said, "I'm gonna make Democrats and Jeff Sessions and Lisa Murkowski kiss my fat ass!"

Well, not really. But it was two days of utter degradation, an embarrassing display put on by our goddamned president. You've heard some of the shitty things he said, but, believe me (as he would say), there was line after line of shame and shamelessness and dickishness and brazen fuckery. For instance,

At the Boy Scout Jamboree:

- "I am thrilled to be here. Thrilled. And if you think that was an easy trip, you’re wrong." Trump is acting like he personally hiked through the mountains of West Virginia to get to the event when he was brought there on a golden throne. Probably there was no golf cart go from the holding area to the stage. But he wants the kids to be grateful he made the effort.

- "By the way, what do you think the chances are that this incredible, massive crowd, record-setting is going to be shown on television tonight? One percent or zero?" Trump is obsessed with setting records. He could just become a professional hot dog eater and call up Guinness, but, no, he's gotta fuck with all of us.

- "I saw him at a cocktail party, and it was very sad because the hottest people in New York were at this party." In the midst of a rambling tale about William Leavitt, Trump dropped in that he went to a cocktail party with the "hottest people." Because of course he did. Because why would he waste his time with less than the hottest? Because what the fuck else would you tell a bunch of children and teenagers eager to race wooden block cars? A story about camping? He'd've had to have fucking camped to do that.

- "Do you remember that incredible night with the maps and the Republicans are red and the Democrats are blue, and that map was so red, it was unbelievable, and they didn't know what to say?" He told the Scouts about his election victory. Because of course he did. He also shit on Hillary Clinton. Because of course he did.

- "By the way, under the Trump administration, you’ll be saying, Merry Christmas again when you go shopping. Believe me. Merry Christmas. They've been downplaying that little, beautiful phrase. You're going to be saying, merry Christmas again, folks." It's fucking July. It's. Fucking. July. Anyone saying, "Merry Christmas" now is a fucking loser.

And then at his speech "Saluting American Heroes" in Ohio:

- "It's great to be back in Youngstown. It was an incredible time we had. And you know the numbers, and you saw for many, many years Democrats -- and they're really great -- but Democrats, they win in Youngstown. But not this time." Election victory. Because of course.

And then at his rally in Youngstown later:

- "Boy, he's a young one. He's going back home to mommy. Oh, is he in trouble. He's in trouble. He's in trouble. And I'll bet his mommy voted for us, right?" This was a reaction to a protester, bullying him and deriding him for doing what Trump did for years on Twitter when Obama was president.

- "We're gonna have it so that Americans can once again speak the magnificent words of Alexander Hamilton, 'Here the people govern.'" This was weirdly sandwiched between his proclamation that he was going to bring back factory jobs and his assertion that only the "late, great" Lincoln was more presidential than him. As usual, Trump gets history wrong. Hamilton was talking about Congress, especially that Congress was a check on the power of the presidency. In other words, "Here, sir, the people govern: Here they act by their immediate representatives" is a direct rebuke to Trump's desire to run roughshod over Congress.

- "So they'll take a young, beautiful girl, 16, 15, and others and they slice them and dice them with a knife because they want them to go through excruciating pain before they die. And these are the animals that we've been protecting for so long." This was shortly after Trump praised police brutality towards people arrested as gang members. It's fear-mongering in its purest, most sinister form, a kind of propaganda that will get people worked up.

- "We will buy American and will hire, finally, American." Trump's own businesses are seeking visas to hire foreign workers. So, you know, fuck that lie.

At each of these occasions, the crowds, even most of the Scouts, cheered and chanted wildly.

This vertiginous ride we're on has gotten sickening. Trump has degraded the language, the laws, the nation, and us, all of us. How far into the dirt will he drag us before we finally either give up or fight back?

Russian Mob Money Helped Build Donald Trump Business Empire - Trump’s Russian Laundromat

A stunning report in The New Republic alleges that, whether Donald Trump knew it or not, for decades he made a large portion of his personal fortune from Russian mobsters & oligarchs.



Trump's Russian Laundromat

Ron Perlman Talks President Donald Trump Speech Patterns

Joy Reid is joined by actor and author Ron Perlman, and Columbia University professor of linguistics John McWhorter, on the bombshell statements and run-on sentences from Donald Trump’s recent New York Times interview.

John McCain Is The Perfect American Lie

By Drew Magary

Seventeen years ago I gave John McCain’s Presidential campaign five bucks. It was my first time donating to a political campaign, much less a Republican one. But like a lot of people, I marveled at his backstory of surviving years and years in Viet Cong captivity (I even read, like, three pages of that big David Foster Wallace story about him), and—more important—I eagerly took all his Straight Talk Express horseshit to heart. Hey, that Republican is saying stuff about other Republicans! He seems like a real rebel!

Back in 2000, McCain scratched that itch for anyone like me who enjoyed pretending to be politically independent, and who happily latched onto McCain as a talisman of that independence. You see, guys! I can vote for a Republican when it’s the RIGHT Republican! And over the course of this century, McCain has dined out on his reputation as The Good Conservative. He’s the senator who gives thunderous copy to reporters, and does SNL, and issues bipartisan reports on the military giving the NFL promo money, and does the occasional cameo on Parks &Rec. He fulfills every Brokawian wet dream certain members of the press still have about politicians setting aside their differences and doing the RIGHT THING, by God.

Today, Senate Republicans moved one step closer to dismantling Obamacare, potentially leaving millions of people uninsured, jacking up their premiums, and letting insurance companies cover only what they feel like covering. John McCain voted for that bill because of course he did. He has always been a big talker, but when it comes to the actual meat-and-potatoes voting process, he falls in line.

He didn’t do the right thing. He didn’t even come within 500 yards of doing the right thing. For the past two decades, he has never done the right thing. He’s a fraud. Alex Pareene had him nailed ages ago. In fact, it’s “nice” Republicans like McCain who provide cover for evil swine like Mitch McConnell, allowing them to gut the American security net and fuck over anyone who doesn’t live behind an iron gate.

But that didn’t stop McCain from having the gall—the unmitigated, repulsive GALL—to stand up in front of the Senate today and put on his Maverick jammies and deliver a sermon bashing the very non-legislation that, only minutes earlier, he had flown cross-country to help will into being:

https://twitter.com/ABCPolitics/status/889928867468775424

This is the part where I point out that McCain has brain cancer and is likely dying. And while I wouldn’t wish brain cancer on my worst enemy, McCain’s illness shouldn’t act as some magical shield that absolves him from abetting—no wait, LEADING—a GOP whose appetite for brazen monstrousness grows by the day. And yet, there were Senate Democrats giving our man a standing O right after he gleefully fucked their constituents, because Democrats would happily set aside differences with Godzilla for the sake of gentility. There was scumbag opportunist Cory Booker, hugging McCain and acting like this was some kind of heartwarming meeting of the minds. And of course, there were the usual political access merchants who were more than happy to line up and shine McCain’s boots:

https://twitter.com/SCClemons/status/889927208646701058

https://twitter.com/abbydphillip/status/889923333982232576

This is vile. John McCain was never anyone’s white knight. This is the man who ushered in the age of troll candidacies by tapping Sarah Palin as his running mate. This is the man who caved to Donald Trump even after Trump had the audacity to mock his time as a POW. This is the man who called his own wife a cunt in public. This is a man who has spent all this time acting as if all the Bad Republicans were forcing him to go along with their nefarious deeds while voting in lockstep with them. He is not a reluctant Republican. He’s a shitbag, same as the rest of them.

If you’re some Pollyanna offering your support to John McCain as he hollows out Medicaid, you’re a naïve dupe. As this guy said, The West Wing wasn’t real. It was never real. The twin illusions of bipartisanship and decorum have always provided handy cover for anyone looking to willfully ignore the fiendish inequalities of the American political infrastructure and the GOP’s rapturous thirst for cruelty; a thirst that has only recently emerged in the foreground thanks to the existence of President Trump.

"John McCain is the perfect American lie, a man who professes to be noble and fair and just while being none of those things."

I was duped when I gave McCain my pitiable little sum all those years ago, but I know better today. Everyone should know better. Everyone should realize that John McCain is the perfect American lie, a man who professes to be noble and fair and just while being none of those things. He served his country honorably in combat, but in no other fashion. And he serves out his time in the Senate, and here on planet Earth, as a pathetic enabler. Never the lion; always the sheep. For seventeen years, gullible people have been waiting for him to make his face turn, to make some grand defiant move for the sake of God and country. But that was always just clever branding on his part, and today should serve as a cold slap in the face to anyone who still thought he might have that kind of political courage left in him.

He's a fucking disgrace.

John McCain Is Neither A Maverick Nor A Hero - He's A Coward

Another Big Republican Lie On The ACA: They Can Give You Something Better

Posted by Rude One

We know that Republicans have lied nonstop about the Affordable Care Act ever since it was passed into law by a Democratic-led Congress and signed by the Negro President.

We know that Republicans are stuck because the ACA is mostly based on Massachusetts's Romneycare and both come from plans from the conservative Heritage Foundation.

We know that Republicans lied and continue to lie about the effects of the AHCA and then the BCRA, the House and Senate versions of their "repeal and replace" bills.

But there is one more thing, one more set of lies, that is responsible for sticking a shiv into the GOP's dream of murdering a bunch of poor people so rich people can be richer.

See, Republicans keep trying to put the blame for the fix they're in on American voters. "We have to keep our promises to the American people," Republicans say. "We won the last three elections by promising to repeal and replace Obamacare," they whine like a dog that caught a cat only to realize it was a fucking mountain lion. Yeah, they're right. Voters did put Republicans in power over the promise of getting rid of the Obamacare horror and torture or whatever drama queen word you wanna use. But, and this is important, they only wanted to get rid of it because Republicans said they'd do better. Or, to put it another way, they lied about what they could do for people if the Affordable Care Act was overturned.

Senator after senator told you how you were enslaved by Obamacare and that the GOP would set you free. John McCain proclaimed, "Families in Arizona and across the country should have the power to make their own medical decisions – not Washington bureaucrats. This bill puts patients and doctors back in charge of their health care by fully repealing Obamacare and replacing it with a free-market approach that strengthens the quality and accessibility of care." John Thune promised, "It’s time to repeal this law and replace it with something that works. And that’s precisely what we’re going to do."

Others got even more explicit. For instance, here's Wyoming Senator John Barrasso (campaign slogan: "If you can't trust a man whose name includes the phrase 'bare ass,' who can you trust?"), from a speech he gave on the floor of the Senate in November, shortly after the election: "First of all, nobody is talking about taking people off of insurance without a replacement plan in place." Except that's exactly what they talked about. While Republicans will constantly mention how President Obama said, "If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor" (which, to be fair, was an absurd promise), they simply aren't owning that they got voters all excited about this new fantasy health care plan where they wouldn't lose coverage despite repealing the very law that gave them coverage.

In fact, when you get to what President Donald Trump said, Republicans were promising something amazing. Put aside that Trump repeatedly said he wouldn't cut Medicaid and then, immediately after inauguration, put out a plan to cut Medicaid. Trump and his people consistently promised that Americans would have better health insurance coverage, that all Americans would be covered, and that it would cost them less in premiums and deductibles. He literally said this: "You will end up with great health care for a fraction of the price." And he told Americans that we would have a "beautiful picture" in the future of health care.

Republicans like to say that Democrats promise that they'll give people "free stuff" and that people on government programs like Medicaid are "moochers." But Republicans didn't win on the Obamacare issue because people didn't want free stuff. They didn't win because they said they would take away their health insurance. They won because they promised people more free stuff and better free stuff.

In other words, they lied. But voters believed them. They wanted to mooch more.

And the vast majority of Americans realize now that it was a lie because the Trumpcare plan that the Senate may vote to move forward tomorrow does none of the things they promised other than get rid of the health insurance they have now or make it worse and more expensive. So, of course, now we get articles like "These Americans Hated the Health Law. Until the Idea of Repeal Sank In." In that New York Times piece, Pennsylvania dumb shits who once thought Obamacare was the worst thing since the theory of evolution say things like "I can’t even remember why I opposed it" and "Everybody needs some sort of health insurance." One stupid fuck went from opposing the law to "Now that you’ve insured an additional 20 million people, you can’t just take the insurance away from these people. It’s just not the right thing to do."

But we knew all along that people liked the Affordable Care Act. They liked the elimination of spending caps and of pre-existing conditions determining premiums. They liked keeping their kids on insurance until age 26. And a shit-ton of people got to live because of the Medicaid expansion. Yeah, the ACA was fine. What they hated was Obamacare, which is exactly what Republicans wanted people to think of for a very simple reason:

Most Republican voters don't hate the ACA. They hate that their white asses were saved by a black man.

They resented the shit out of that fact. It put a lie to all the racism they've clung to for generations. The GOP used that racism for years. Now that the black man is gone, though, they're totally fine with the law and its benefits. They gave Republicans a chance to give them more stuff, but they don't want their stuff taken away. Especially when that "stuff" is the right to live a healthy life.

Be careful this week, dear dumb shits and dearer smart asses. Republicans are going to keep coming after the Affordable Care Act, no matter how many shivs you stick in it. Stay on the phones. Keep the pressure up on the few Republican senators who can make the difference. Don't let the liars win. It's life and death, motherfuckers, life and death.

And once we finally put this beast down, let's turn our attention to single payer.

(Fun extra part of Barrasso's speech: "Democrats promised that they would listen to other people’s ideas, and then they went behind a closed door in an office back there, and they wrote the law ignoring all of the suggestions by Republicans, and without any Republican support at all. We’re not going to make that same mistake. We will be looking for Democrats’ help, we will be looking for Democrats to work with. We will be listening to Democrats’ ideas, and we will be working very hard to win Democrat votes for any new law." Insert your own rolling-with-laughter emoji here.)

Trump's Been Laundering Russian Mob Money For Decades, Allegedly

Russian mobsters needed a lot of property from a sleazy businessman who never asks questions... Cenk Uygur, host of The Young Turks, breaks it down.

"In 1984, a Russian émigré named David Bogatin went shopping for apartments in New York City.

The 38 year old had arrived in America seven years before, with just $3 in his pocket. But for a former pilot in the Soviet Army—his specialty had been shooting down Americans over North Vietnam—he had clearly done quite well for himself.

Bogatin wasn’t hunting for a place in Brighton Beach, the Brooklyn enclave known as “Little Odessa” for its large population of immigrants from the Soviet Union. Instead, he was fixated on the glitziest apartment building on Fifth Avenue, a gaudy, 58 story edifice with gold plated fixtures and a pink-marble atrium: Trump Tower.”

Read more here: https://newrepublic.com/article/143586/trumps-russian-laundromat-trump-tower-luxury-high-rises-dirty-money-international-crime-syndicate

Pond scum moonlighting as a human being

By Walter Einenkel

During President Obama’s administration, useless hedge fund managers cried big boy tears about how persecuted they were being. President Obama had to frequently attempt to remind them that they made way too much money to be crying over anything.

Sadly, President Obama did not have the will to send them all to jail where many of them deserve to be—to this day.

In 2010, after President Obama helped to navigate our country out of the largest economic disaster since the 1929 Wall Street crash, he held a televised Town Hall. During it, a younger and equally craven Anthony Scaramucci got to ask a question.

The question sounded something like “WAH WAH WAH WAH WAH, my feelings!”



To which President Obama replied.

I think it'd be useful to go back and look at the speeches that I've made, including a speech by the way I made back in 2007, on Wall Street, before Lehmans had gone under. In which I warned about a potential crisis if we didn't start reforming practices on Wall Street. At the time I said exactly what you said, which is Wall Street and Main Street are connected. We need a vibrant vital financial sector that is investing in businesses investing in jobs investing in our people providing consumers loans so they can buy products all that's very important and we want that to thrive but we've got to do so in a responsible way. 

I have been amused over the last couple of years this sense of somehow meet beating up on Wall Street. I think most folks on Main Street feel like they got beat up on; and I'll be honestly there's a big chunk of the country--hold on--I was like there's a big chunk of the country that thinks that I have been too soft yet on Wall Street and that's the majority—not the minority. 

Now, what I've tried to do is just try to be practical. You know I'm sure that at any given point over the last two years there have been times where I have been frustrated, and I'll give you some examples—I mean when I hear folks who say that somehow were being too tough on Wall Street, but after a huge crisis the top 25 hedge fund managers took home a billion dollars in income that year. A billion!

For what it’s worth, Scaramucci is exactly like the rest of this administration—pond scum moonlighting as human.

H/T Rawstory

Meet Trump's Newest Scumbag Anthony Scaramucci

Anthony Scaramucci talks a tough game, until he doesn’t.

John Iadarola, Ben Mankiewicz, and Mark Thompson, hosts of The Young Turks, discuss.

Terrified Trump May Try To Pardon Himself And His Family Members Over Russia Scandal

The recent actions by Trump suggest that he is running scared as Robert Mueller's investigation zeroes in on the White House.

By Sean Colarossi

Donald Trump, clearly terrified over the direction of the Russia investigation, is considering to use his pardon powers on himself, his family members and his aides, according to a stunning new report in The Washington Post.

The Post reports that Trump has asked his advisers about his ability to pardon himself or others, and another source said that the president’s lawyers are also discussing the possibility of issuing pardons.

The president is also reportedly trying to build a case against Special Counsel Robert Mueller – the man running the wide-ranging investigation into Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election and Moscow’s connections to the Trump campaign.

More from the eye-popping report:

Some of President Trump’s lawyers are exploring ways to limit or undercut special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s Russia investigation, building a case against what they allege are his conflicts of interest and discussing the president’s authority to grant pardons, according to people familiar with the effort.

Trump has asked his advisers about his power to pardon aides, family members and even himself in connection with the probe, according to one of those people. A second person said Trump’s lawyers have been discussing the president’s pardoning powers among themselves.

Trump’s legal team declined to comment on the issue. But one adviser said the president has simply expressed a curiosity in understanding the reach of his pardoning authority, as well as the limits of Mueller’s investigation.

With the Russia investigation continuing to widen, Trump’s lawyers are working to corral the probe and question the propriety of the special counsel’s work. They are actively compiling a list of Mueller’s alleged potential conflicts of interest, which they say could serve as a way to stymie his work, according to several of Trump’s legal advisers.

It’s hard to be shocked by any news about this president or the increasingly explosive scandal surrounding his ties to Russia, but this is a rather incredible development.

The news also comes a day after Trump threatened Mueller in an interview with The New York Times, telling the paper that if Mueller decides to investigate his family’s finances, then he will be crossing a “red line.”

Ultimately, Trump’s efforts to intimidate Mueller in hopes that he will back off the Russia investigation, while now reportedly considering whether to pardon himself and those close to him, suggests this is a man running scared.

Bizarre Trump Interview Suggests Serious Mental Instability

Trump holds an audio interview with The New York Times and denigrates his own Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe, and the special prosecutor investigating the Trump-Russia connection Robert Mueller.



https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/19/us/politics/trump-interview-sessions-russia.html

BREAKING: CBO: Premiums will increase by $11,500 for a 64 year old with middle income

https://www.democraticunderground.com/10029349689