The 100 Greatest Accomplishments Of Trump's First 100 Days

Sit back and enjoy some of Donald Trump's greatest accomplishments from the first 100 days.

Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams pleads guilty in his federal corruption trial

By Jeremy Roebuck, Staff Writer

Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams abruptly pleaded guilty Thursday, nearly two weeks into a federal bribery trial that dragged embarrassing details about his messy personal life and financial struggles out into open court.

Williams will resign as the city’s top prosecutor as part of a deal under which he pleaded guilty to one count related to accepting a bribe from Bucks County businessman Mohammad Ali.

Asked by U.S. District Judge Paul S. Diamond whether he intended to follow through with his resignation, Williams choked up and answered, “humbly, sincerely and effective immediately.”

Diamond said he wanted Williams’ resignation letter couriered to Mayor Kenny’s office as soon as the hearing was over.

Williams remained somber looking throughout the guilty plea hearing.

“I’m just very sorry for all of this, your honor,” he said.

At a followup hearing to determine whether Williams should be jailed immediately, defense attorney Thomas F. Burke argued the disgraced prosecutor was not a flight risk.

“He has no means as the court can see to go anywhere. He has no support. He’s deeply in debt and he doesn’t even have a car,” Burke said.

Taking the witness stand to plead with a judge not to send him directly to prison before sentencing, tears welled up in Williams’ eyes while discussing his daughters.

He acknowledged he was broke, saying he had “probably about $150 to $200” in his bank account.

In addition to accepting that he could face a maximum 5 year term when he is sentenced Oct. 24, Williams agreed to forfeit $64,878.22

While the 28 remaining counts against Williams were dismissed, he “admits that he committed all of the conduct in those 29 counts,”  Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Zauzmer said.

“Williams took benefits repeatedly from Mr. Ali knowing that those benefits were offered – at least in part – to influence him to take official actions,”  said Zauzmer.

Williams notified prosecutors he wanted to take the plea deal at 1 a.m.Thursday, said Zauzmer.

Sources close to the case say the deal is similar to one Williams was offered – and turned down – one day before his indictment earlier this year on 29 corruption-related counts including bribery, extortion and honest services fraud.

Prior to his admission, prosecutors and Williams’ defense lawyers – Thomas F. Burke and Trevan Borum – spent more than an hour huddled in quiet conversation in the courtroom, while the district attorney was nowhere to be seen.

His decision came after weeks of damaging testimony in which government witnesses characterized him a shameless beggar who repeatedly turned to the money of others to fund a lifestyle he couldn’t afford.

Two wealthy businessmen testified that they had showered the district attorney with gifts of all-expenses-paid travel, luxury goods and even cash in anticipation of the legal favors they might need from him.

And prosecutors had alleged that Williams delivered for them – writing letters to throw his weight into their legal problems and promising in one instance to intervene in a drug case brought by his office.

Additionally, Williams was accused of misspending thousands of dollars from his campaign fund on memberships to exclusive Philadelphia social clubs, misusing city vehicles as if they were his own and misappropriating money intended to fund his mother’s nursing home care.

Read a recap of Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams’ trial with our day-by-day updates and learn more with our explainer on everything you need to know about the case.

Read more by Jeremy Roebuck

Screw You

By rpannier

Yes, SCREW YOU! F@CK YOU! And EVERYTHING ELSE YOU
I swear the next sob story I hear about some jackass who voted for il douchebag whining and crying about how they feel betrayed by the Clown Prince of Idiocracy I'm going find them and hurl a bushel full of rotted apples at their stupid, whining, jerk face.

I have no sympathy, NONE, for the vast majority of the denizens of the political wasteland who want us to feel their pain because their fucking job went to Canada, or Mexico, or China, or was just fucking closed so some vulture capitalist pig whom you admire so much for their grit and monetary know-how can buy that new ivory covered back scratcher (my obligatory Simpsonism)

Guess what, oh Servant of the Lord of the Dung, you got took and I don't give a damn.

You voted not just for the Grifter-in-Chief, but then you turned around and voted for his Merry Band of Criminals. Yeah! I'm looking at YOU Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Florida. You who re-elected the odious Republikkan senator from your state for some reason that only someone with several advanced degrees in Behavioral Science focusing specifically on the Stupid, the Lame, the Ignorant, the Bat Shit Moron could possibly hope to comprehend.

Screw you, oh Joe Six-Pack and Sally Housecoat (Another Simpsonism) who are getting on TV and singing your sad tale of how Carrier is really, actually sending the jobs you held elsewhere... and YOU JUST DON'T UNDERSTAND. I mean, "HE TOLD US THOSE JOBS WERE SAVED!"
So some (probably most) of you vague-witted harlequins happily tossed away your vote on a man whose whole history has been one of, and get this, 'NOT GIVING A FUCK ABOUT ANYONE BUT HIMSELF!' A simple ixquick (shameless plug), google or whatever search engine you use, would have shown you this.
But, Nooooooooooooo!!! Now, we're treated to seeing a half dozen of you Swamp Creature rejects on TV telling us how betrayed you feel. The funny part is... You really look surprised.
Weeeeeeeeellllllllll... screw you! Screw the person who was standing to your left and to your right. Screw everyone who worked at Carrier who voted for Trump.
My sympathies lie with those of you who didn't vote for the Swinish Lout that presently claims the title of President.
They deserve our sympathies.
But here's the thing, you won't see them on TV all glazy eyed, drooling, shaking their heads, saying, "I...I just don't get it."
That's probably why they don't get interviewed. They ought to send a reporter to your town and do a segment on every Carrier employee who voted Clinton beating the shit out of the Trump voters with padded clubs.
But that would be too violent... maybe. And, if it were me who had lost my job and they gave me a club, it'd take 15 people to pull me away from you nit-witted trolls.

Moving on to another location in the Midwest, but still smack-dab in the heart of Doofania (Phineas and Ferb), Fox6 and Money reports that GE is closing their plant in Waukesha and move its 300-plus jobs to Canada.
And yes... Yes... YEs... YES, the addlepated dwellers of Swale of Stupid are SHOCKED! DISAPPOINTED! and SADDENED! this is happening.
I'm sure the DUH-nizens are all of those things and more.
Maybe... and just maybe now... YOU SHOULD HAVE F@CKING THOUGHT OF THAT WHEN YOU NOT ONLY VOTED FOR THE ORANGE SWINE, BUT ALSO VOTED TO RE-ELECT JOHNSON TO THE SENATE AND RYAN TO CONGRESS.
By a hefty margin of over 2:1 You Butt-Clowns voted for the poor man's Mussolini. By over 2:1 you voted for the reject from the Movie Leprechaun Paul Ryan (rejected because he was too sociopathic for the part).

You want a good laugh. It's pathetic, but I laughed.
“Doesn’t he realize that we voted for him? He should have been there and saw my wife crying. He should have been there,” Kenneth Olsen said (of Ryan).
Poor... poor Kenneth Olsen. You voted for Truquemada and IT and now you and your wife (who also likely voted for them) has a sad.
And why should Ryan show up? Do you have a hefty campaign donation for him. Or, do you just want to sit there while he laughs at your stupidity?
SCREW YOU!
Screw Bret Mattice, who voted for the first time...EVER! And guess for whom the dimbulb voted? If you guessed the least qualified person on the ballot, any ballot, in any country, at any time in history, you'd be correct.
Do us all a favor Bret Mattice, don't ever vote again... please
Oh... and screw you!

Then there's this primary school refuse, Joe Barlow. In an interview, supporter of the Annoying Orange reject, Joe Barlow, said this....
Note... pay careful attention to your jaw. It may drop so hard and so fast you could hurt yourself. My suggestion is to tie it off like Jacob Marley in a Christmas Carol
“I don’t believe there’s hope for our plant. My hope is, companies like that, that offshore all the work, I hope he follows through on his 35% tax and punishes those businesses,”
You see that? "I hope he follows through on his 35%...blah." Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! He hopes Trump follows through on a campaign promise.
Screw You Joe. You and your Trumpists screwed over your fellow employees, the one's who didn't vote for the squalid-one. The one's who didn't just say, "How fucking stupid a vote can I cast? Hmmmmm. I know. I'll vote for all three. Because what could possibly go wrong?"

Here's the difference between you People Under the Stairs and say, some out of work guy, who is surfing through garbage dumps hoping to find enough scrap metal that he can sell to survive. I can almost understand them. They had nothing to lose. But... you... you F@CKERS had good paying jobs. At the time, your plant in Wisconsin was NOT... I repeat NOT in danger of closing. In fact, it was his election and the inane rantings of the Evil Elf about the Import-Export Bank that got it closed and moved on to Canada.
You had money! You had a House! You had something! You pittered it away for some unknown reason.
Write a book titled. "How NOT to be a squirrel brained jack-ass!"
Tell us what you were thinking, so we know what NOT to do

To my niece in Minnesota (still in the Midwest) who voted for Trump, for one reason and ONE REASON ONLY.... (dum... er... drum roll. I'm sure you already know the answer) "I did it for the babies."
Yes! Yes! Yes, ladies and gentlemen... Abortion! Abortion was the reason why she voted for the Fake Tanned Ogre! Abortion!
Now... now... she's all concerned because his policies could hurt the children. You know... the boys and girls that are NOT little growing pieces of tissue, that if removed from the womb would die within a few hours. Actual living, breathing HUMAN BEINGS.
SCREW YOU! Screw you and Your fucking Abortion fixation

Slogging back to Indiana and a revisit to dimwit Helen Beristain and her undocumented husband.
Ms. Helen Beristain actually thought her husband would not get deported.
Laugh along with me folks. She's as jaw dropping stupid as the guys in Wisconsin.

Ms. Helen Beristain somehow believed her husband would not be deported because only the 'Bad Hombres' would go. She said (before her husband was shipped off to Mexico) "I don't think ICE is out there to detain anyone and break families, no,"
She was, of course, shocked that her husband was kicked out.
How does she feel now? Don't know. According to CNN, she won't answer calls from any news sources.
Screw You Ms Helen Beristain. And screw Granger, Indiana... the very Republican Town of Granger, Indiana. The shocked citizenry of the town who thought Roberto would not be sent back because he was a good person, 'A Good Hombre'. Screw You

I could go on. There are so many of these stories. The dumb twerp in Florida who was afraid of losing his insurance, but felt it would be best to vote for the groper because he was certain it would be best for the whole country to do so, even if it hurt him.
Good job, Buttercup! You lost out. And... here's the part you somehow missed... They're SCREWING everyone over.
Oh.. unless you're a millionaire.

The oxygen thieves, the simpletons who voted for his Assness, or at the very least, wouldn't vote for Clinton because somehow... someway... there was 'NO ACTUAL DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE TWO.'
HYSTERICAL isn't it? Because if she were president right now, Gorsuch, or someone worse would be on the Court... I guess. Oh... and we'd be looking at selling off National Park Land. And of course, we'd have a President beholden to the closest thing to a real-life Ernst Stavro Blofeld, in Putin. And, of course, she'd have insulted half the leaders of our allies by whining about electoral votes and actual votes and her inauguration attendance and some other rubbish. And lied about taping conversations in the White House (or did trump lie?)
Screw You! Screw You! Screw You!

(And for the sake of transparency; 1. I voted for Sanders in the primary. 2. I did belong to the Clinton Group on DU. 3 I belonged to every Democratic President Group for 2016 on DU. 4. I voted for Clinton in the GE. Just in case you're thinking, "I wonder who rpannier voted for?")

Or the countless stupid people across the country, male and female, white, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, African American, western Asian, Protestants, Jews, Catholics, Muslims (yeah, I'm perplexed by that as well) who, for some inexplicable reason got up out of bed and said to themselves, "I'm going to do the FUCKING STUPIDEST THING I WILL EVER do in my entire lifetime."
They somehow found a polling station and voted for that thing that sits in the White House, in a bathrobe, screaming at a television set and finding new and different ways to enrich his family and friends, while screwing over everyone else.

Well... Screw You (he says calmly). You're an idiot. I cannot fix this problem. Most of my family cannot fix this problem. Many of my friends cannot. They got out and voted. They didn't vote for the orange-faced fake-haired charlatan.

****************
I am finished. I have said my piece. I am still not at piece with the low wattage loser in the WH.
And... one last thought....
Screw You if You voted for Trump

Obama’s secret struggle to punish Russia for Putin’s election assault

Early last August, an envelope with extraordinary handling restrictions arrived at the White House. 

Sent by courier from the CIA, it carried “eyes only” instructions that its contents be shown to just four people: President Barack Obama and three senior aides.

Inside was an intelligence bombshell, a report drawn from sourcing deep inside the Russian government that detailed Russian President Vladi­mir Putin’s direct involvement in a cyber campaign to disrupt and discredit the U.S. presidential race.

But it went further. The intelligence captured Putin’s specific instructions on the operation’s audacious objectives — defeat or at least damage the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, and help elect her opponent, Donald Trump.

At that point, the outlines of the Russian assault on the U.S. election were increasingly apparent.

Hackers with ties to Russian intelligence services had been rummaging through Democratic Party computer networks, as well as some Republican systems, for more than a year. In July, the FBI had opened an investigation of contacts between Russian officials and Trump associates. And on July 22, nearly 20,000 emails stolen from the Democratic National Committee were dumped online by WikiLeaks.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/world/national-security/obama-putin-election-hacking/?utm_term=.12a31b9dd507&hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_russiaobama-banner-7a%3Ahomepage%2Fstory

The Honest Cabinet

The Confederate General Babbles Before Congress

Posted by Excommunicated Cardinal

At 2:30pm Eastern time today, Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III will testify under oath before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence regarding his contacts with government officials of the Russian Federation prior to the January 20th inauguration, as well as his role in the firing of former FBI Director James Comey. Many burning questions remain for Sessions.

Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller has brought on money laundering experts, a veritable "murders' row" of prosecutors, while the right-wing world has turned on him in a transparent and vicious attempt to undermine the credibility of the investigation into the Trump campaign's alleged collusion with Russia and other filthy laundry the investigation turns up.

To complicate matters further for the embattled chief executive, there are reports that he is considering attempting to fire Robert Mueller. Jesse Eisinger and Justin Elliott of ProPublica have also reported that Trump's personal lawyer Marc Kasowitz has claimed to have been a catalyst in the firing of former US Attorney Preet Bhara.

In other news, a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against the administration in regards to Trump's self-proclaimed travel ban, unanimously upholding an injunction preventing the implementation of the policy.

Meanwhile, Mitch McConnell is trying desperately to pass another cruel ACA-repeal bill with no public text or CBO score.

When Will Trump Voters Realize They've Been Had?

People don't like to admit they were wrong, which is what they would be doing if they concede that Trump is not up to the job.

By Rick Shenkman / History News Network

June 7, 2017, 12:04 PM GMT

Photo Credit: George Sheldon / Shutterstock.com

When will the people of West Virginia and Pennsylvania, those stalwart Trump voters who believe he’ll be bringing back coal jobs, finally figure out they’ve been had?

History suggests it's unrealistic to expect people to change their minds quickly. This is a pattern that has held for centuries. In the 1600's the Salem witch trials dragged on for eight long months before townsfolk finally began to realize that they had been caught up in an irrational frenzy. More recently, Americans proved during Watergate that they are reluctant to turn on a president they have just elected despite mounds of evidence incriminating him in scandalous practices. The Watergate burglary took place on June 17, 1972. But it wasn't until April 30, 1973 – eleven months later – that his popularity finally fell below 50 percent. This was long after the Watergate burglars had been tried and convicted and the FBI had confirmed news reports that the Republicans had played dirty tricks on the Democrats during the campaign. Leaked testimony had even showed that former Attorney General John Mitchell knew about the break-in in advance. But not until Nixon fired White House Counsel John Dean and White House aides H.R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman resigned did a majority turn against the president. And even at that point Nixon's poll numbers stood higher than Trump's. Nixon:  48 percent; Trump: 42 percent.

It's not just conservative voters who are reluctant to change their minds. So are liberals. After news reports surfaced in the 1970s proving that John Kennedy was a serial philanderer millions of his supporters refused to acknowledge it. A poll in 2013 show a majority of Americans still think of him as a good family man.

Thus far not even many leading Democrats have been willing to come out in favor of Trump's impeachment. Cory Booker, the liberal senator from New Jersey, said this past week it's simply too soon. And if a guy like Booker is not yet prepared to come straight out for impeachment, why should we think Trump voters would be willing to? It is only just in the last few weeks that polls show that a plurality of voters now favor Trump's impeachment. (Twelve percent of self-identified Trump voters share this view, which is remarkable.)

It's no mystery why people are reluctant to change their minds. Social scientists have produced hundreds of studies that explain the phenomenon. Rank partisanship is only part of the answer. Mainly it’s that people don't like to admit they were wrong, which is what they would be doing if they concede that Trump is not up to the job. When Trump voters hear news that puts their leader in an unfavorable light they experience cognitive dissonance. The natural reaction to this is to deny the legitimacy of the source of the news that they find upsetting. This is what explains the harsh attacks on the liberal media. Those stories are literally making Trump voters feel bad. As the Emory University social scientist Drew Westen has demonstrated, people hearing information contrary to their beliefs will cease giving it credence. This is not a decision we make at the conscious level. Our brain makes it for us automatically.

So what leads people to finally change their minds? One of the most convincing explanations is provided by the Theory of Affective Intelligence. This mouthful of a name refers to the tendency of people experiencing cognitive dissonance to feel anxiety when they do so. As social scientist George Marcus has explained, when the burden of hanging onto an existing opinion becomes greater than the cost of changing it, we begin to reconsider our commitments. What's the trigger? Anxiety. When there's a mismatch between our views of the way the world works and reality we grow anxious. This provokes us to make a fresh evaluation.

What this research suggests is that we probably have a ways to go before Trump voters are going to switch their opinions. While some are evidently feeling buyers' remorse, a majority aren't. They're just not anxious enough yet. Liberals need not worry. The very same headlines that are giving them an upset stomach are making it more and more likely Trump voters are also experiencing discomfort. What might push them over the edge?  One possibility would be a decision to follow through on his threat to end subsidies to insurance companies under Obamacare, leading to the collapse of the system, and the loss of coverage for millions of Trump voters. That’s become more and more likely since the Senate is apparently unable to pass the repeal and replace measure Trump has been counting on.  So liberals just have to wait and watch.  Will the story unfold like Watergate?  Every day the answer increasingly seems yes.

An optimist would argue that social media will help push people to change their minds faster now than in the past.  But social media could also have the opposite effect. People living in a bubble who get their media from biased sources online may be less likely to encounter the contrary views that stimulate reflection than was common, say, in the Nixon years when virtually all Americans watched the mainstream network news shows.  Eventually, one supposes, people will catch on no matter how they consume news.  Of late even Fox News viewers have heard enough disturbing stories about Trump to begin to reconsider their commitment to him.  That is undoubtedly one reason why Nate Silver found that so many Trump voters are reluctant to count themselves among the strongest supporters.

Rick Shenkman is the editor and founder of the History News Network and the author most recently of Political Animals: How Our Stone-Age Brain Gets in the Way of Smart Politics (Basic Books, January 2016).

Kushner's Charmed Life Comes To A Screeching Halt

By Taegan Goddard

Walter Shapiro: “Even under the benign theory that Kushner thought that a secret back channel was like a small boy’s tin-can telephone, his life in the coming months and maybe years will be a study in misery. He will probably spend more time with his personal lawyer, Clinton Justice Department veteran Jamie Gorelick, than with Ivanka or his children. Whether it is an appearance under oath on Capitol Hill or the inevitable FBI interview, every sentence Kushner utters will bring with it possible legal jeopardy.”

“Kushner may have once thought that he established his tough-guy credentials when he stared down angry creditors and impatient bankers over his ill-timed 2007 purchase of a $1.8bn Fifth Avenue office building. But the worst thing that can happen to an over-leveraged real estate investor (as Trump himself knows well) is bankruptcy. When the FBI and special prosecutor Robert Mueller get involved, the penalties can theoretically involve steel bars locking behind you.”

300 of the 800 Jobs That Trump “Saved” At Carrier Plant Are Now Moving To Mexico

By Jason Easley on Tue, May 23rd, 2017 at 4:43 pm

Donald Trump championed the 1,100 jobs he saved at a Carrier plant in Indiana, but the real number of jobs saved was 800, and now out of those 800, 300 are moving to Mexico by Christmas, so Carrier got a $7 million taxpayer handout and still shipped jobs to Mexico.

CNN reported, “Donald Trump may have convinced Carrier not to move its Indianapolis furnace plant to Mexico. But the company is still shipping about 300 of its jobs to Mexico right before Christmas. In a formal notice to the state of Indiana, the company detailed its plans to eliminate 338 jobs at the plant on July 20, four supervisor jobs in October and a final 290 jobs on Dec. 22.”

The Carrier deal was a PR scam.

The pro-Trump messaging behind the deal quickly fell apart when it was revealed that only 800 jobs, not 1,100 would be saved. The number was then reduced to 730 jobs that would be saved.

There was a reason why Trump never got a guarantee that the jobs were going to stay in the United States, because the jobs were always destined to go to Mexico or go away. Carrier is a classic example of why Trump will never be able to restore America’s manufacturing sector to its past glory.

Many more of the Carrier jobs that are staying in the US are going to be gone in the future because more factories are moving towards automation. The biggest threat to US manufacturing sector jobs isn’t in a foreign country. It’s technology.

The Carrier scheme was always a fraud that designed to give a corporation millions of dollars while making it look like Trump was saving jobs, but just like everything else in the Trump presidency, the talk never matches the action.

Then And Now

Karma! Michael Flynn, Mister 'Lock Her Up,' Takes The Fifth

Defeated Pro-Trump Democratic Mayor Is Down In The Dumps

By Alex Seitz-Wald 

Last year, the mayor of a seen-better-days steel town in Western Pennsylvania became the poster child of President Donald Trump's appeal to white working-class Democrats. But he'll soon be out of work after a 26 year old assistant band director at the local high school beat him in a Democratic primary.

Monessen Mayor Louis Mavrakis' outspoken support for Trump turned him into a media sensation.

The 79 year old former union organizer helped decode Trump's appeal in the Rust Belt on Sunday political talk shows and for major newspapers, where he was quoted saying things like: "If ISIS was to come to Monessen, they'd keep on going. They'd say someone already bombed the goddamn place."

Trump himself made a high-profile visit to Monessen, a town of just 7,500, on Mavrakis' invitation.

Trump stood in front of a wall of recycled trash to slam free-trade policies and promised to bring back good-paying coal mining and steel-making jobs.

In this undated image, Lou Mavrakis is shown. Mavrakis recently lost his incumbent bid for the mayoral race of Monessen, PA. Courtesy Observer-Reporter

But Mavrakis' coup in getting Trump to town also helped lead to his downfall.

When a group of residents protested his visit, they were led by Matt Shorraw, a local community activist whose family has been in the town for generations.

"What bothered me the most was Trump's visit got our mayor a lot of press, but he basically used that press to say our city is a dump," Shorraw told NBC News.

Shorraw resolved to run for mayor, even though he had never held public office and was only in his mid-20's.

On Tuesday, he narrowly defeated Mavrakis in the Democratic primary. And with no Republican on the ballot in November, Shorraw is all but guaranteed to be the youngest mayor in the town's history.

In this undated image, Matthew Shorraw is shown. Shorraw recently won the mayoral race for town of Monessen, PA. Courtesy Observer-Reporter

"I think a bit of the Trump phenomenon was that people wanted something completely different. And I think that might have been the case in Monessen, too, with me," said Shorraw.

Biff Rendar, a local Democratic activist who supported Shorraw, said "you cannot find two more opposite people" than Shorraw and Mavrakis.

In photos and videos posted on his campaign's website, Shorraw looks more like the stereotype of a Brooklyn hipster than a Rust Belt worker. His announcement video features him wearing a plaid shirt and blazer with thick-rimmed plastic glasses.

But he got noticed for the community projects he has taken on since he was 18, such as revitalizing an amphitheater. It demonstrated an optimism for the town that voters found refreshing, said Rendar.

The Westmoreland Democratic Party broke its longstanding precedent of not endorsing in primaries in order to back Shorraw after Mavrakis brought Trump to town.

"Mavrakis was already lost to us," said Lorraine Petrosky, the party chairwoman.

If you work for Trump, it's time to quit

After the Comey firing and the Russia intel leak, the I’m-taking-one-for-the-team ship has sailed.

By Rick Wilson May 18 at 6:00 AM

 

Rick Wilson is a Republican consultant and a Daily Beast columnist.

 

I’ve been a Republican political consultant for almost 30 years, and I’ve dispensed a lot of private advice. But now it’s time for me to reach out publicly to my fellow Republicans working in the Trump administration.

We really need to talk.

Whether you’re a 20-something fresh off the campaign trail, or a seasoned Washington insider serving in the Cabinet, by now you’re painfully aware that you’re not making America great again; you’re barely making it to the end of the daily news cycle before your verbally incontinent boss, the putative leader of the free world, once again steers the proverbial car into a ditch. On every front, you’re faced with legal, political and moral hazards. The president’s job, and yours, is a lot harder than it looked, and you know the problem originates in the Oval Office.

[I was fired for criticizing Trump. Getting rid of people like me hurts his agenda.]

You hate that people are shying away from the administration jobs in droves: Just this week, in rapid succession, both Sen. John Cornyn and Rep. Trey Gowdy withdrew their names from consideration as replacements for former FBI Director James Comey, the guy your boss fired. Whatever department you’re in, it’s a safe bet that it’s a whispering graveyard of empty appointments and unfilled jobs.

I know: Many of you serving in Cabinet, sub-Cabinet and White House roles joined Team Trump in good faith, believing you could help steady the ship, smooth the rough edges and, just maybe, put some conservative policy wins up on the board. You could see that President Trump’s undisciplined style was risky, but you hoped the big show playing over at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. would provide you with cover to work steadily and enthusiastically on the administration’s legislative priorities.

Some of you even bought into the ‘Merica First new nationalism. Many of you quietly assured friends in the Washington ecosystem that Trump would settle into his job — after all, just a few days after taking office, he assured us, “I can be the most presidential person ever.”

You figured Trump would turn his political capital into big wins, and that his lack of interest in policy details would let you and your friends in Congress set the agenda. Sure, you knew you’d have to feed Trump’s ego and let him take a victory lap after every success, but you also thought you might claim a smidgen of credit for a popular infrastructure bill, a big tax cut, repeal of Obamacare or a host of other “easy” lifts. Because we’re all ambitious, right? It’s okay to admit it.

Instead, your president botched Trumpcare 1.0 and contributed little as House Speaker Paul Ryan managed to ram public-relations nightmare, Trumpcare 2.0, through the House at the cost of much political blood and treasure. Instead, Trump’s fumbles have left many members of Congress ducking town hall meetings like they’re in the Witness Protection Program. The DOA tax bill and the rest of Trump’s agenda are deader and more pungent than six-day-old fish. Maybe your particular bureau is still afloat, but you’re really not doing much except playing defense and wondering which of your colleagues is leaking to The Washington Post.

You learned quickly that your job isn’t actually to serve the nation, manage your agency or fulfill the role you ostensibly play according to the White House org chart. In reality, you spend most of your time fluffing Trump’s ego. Either that or you’re making excuses for not being a more aggressive suck-up. If you’ve been ordained to appear on television as an administration surrogate, you know by now that your task isn’t to advocate for your agency or issue, but to lavish the president with praise.

[I support Trump, but firing Comey was wrong]

Now, you see the daily train wreck; you see a White House in turmoil and a president drawing an ever-tighter circle of family and corporate vassals around himself. You worry that the scandals and legal troubles, that have been rumbling on the horizon like a summer thunderstorm, are drawing nearer. You should worry.

Every day you get up, slide into the seat of your Prius or Tahoe (and if you’re senior enough, exchange a few polite words with your driver) and start checking Twitter. Whatever it is that you’re feeling, it doesn’t feel anything like Morning in America. It feels like some faraway kleptocracy where the center hasn’t held, the airfield and radio station have fallen to the rebels, and the Maximum Leader is holed up in his secret bunker waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Soon (and by soon, I mean now) you’ll have to make a choice. You’ll have to decide if I’m here to help has morphed into I’m helping this president dismantle the republic. In D.C., principle is as rare as hen’s teeth, but, GOP friends, I’m here to help you.

You already know you can’t save the president because he doesn’t want to be saved. You already know there’s not another, better version of Trump getting ready to show up. You’re smart. You’re loyal. You’re sniffing the wind like a gazelle, nose filled with the scents of predators. You don’t want to break from the pack too soon, but there’s greater risk in waiting too long.

When regimes collapse, dead-enders are the most fascinating to watch — the ones who end up with the profitable concessions and sought-after mistresses. You know already, though, that’s probably not you. So, when this regime falls, ask yourself, do you want to be among those who said not me, or do you want to go out like a Ba’ath Party generalissimo?

Sticking with Trump to the bitter end and pretending the unfolding chaos is just “fake news” won’t save your reputation as the walls close in. It won’t ease the judgment of history. It won’t do anything to polish up your future Wikipedia entry.

Cutting ties with a man who is destructive to our values, profoundly divisive, contemptuous of the rule of law and incontrovertibly unfit to serve in the highest office in the land just might. Do it now.

Trump Asked Comey To End Flynn Inquiry

Comey Memo Says Trump Asked Him To End Flynn Investigation

Republicans plan massive cuts to programs for the poor

Under pressure to balance the budget and align with Trump, the House GOP has its eye on food stamps, welfare and perhaps even veterans’ benefits.

By Rachael Bade and Sarah Ferris

House Republicans just voted to slash hundreds of billions of dollars in health care for the poor as part of their Obamacare replacement. Now, they’re weighing a plan to take the scalpel to programs that provide meals to needy kids and housing and education assistance for low-income families.

Donald Trump’s refusal to overhaul Social Security and Medicare — and his pricey wish-list for infrastructure, a border wall and tax cuts — is sending House budget writers scouring for pennies in politically sensitive places: safety-net programs for the most vulnerable.

Under enormous internal pressure to quickly balance the budget, Republicans are considering slashing more than $400 billion in spending through a process to evade Democratic filibusters in the Senate, multiple sources told POLITICO.

The proposal, which would be part of the House Budget Committee's fiscal 2018 budget, won't specify which programs would get the ax; instead it will instruct committees to figure out what to cut to reach the savings. But among the programs most likely on the chopping block, the sources say, are food stamps, welfare, income assistance for the disabled and perhaps even veterans benefits.

If enacted, such a plan to curb safety-net programs — all while juicing the Pentagon’s budget and slicing corporate tax rates — would amount to the biggest shift in federal spending priorities in decades.

Atop that, GOP budget writers will also likely include Speaker Paul Ryan’s (R-Wis.) proposal to essentially privatize Medicare in their fiscal 2018 budget, despite Trump’s unwavering rejection of the idea. While that proposal is more symbolic and won’t become law under this budget, it’s just another thorny issue that will have Democrats again accusing Republicans of “pushing Granny off the cliff.”

“The Budget Committee is trying to force the entire conference and committees of jurisdiction to focus on ways to bring down this deficit,” said senior budget panel member Rep. Tom Cole.

Republicans have long sought to tackle the nearly $20 trillion debt, but Trump has tied their hands by ruling out cuts to Social Security and Medicare.

The Oklahoma Republican, however, acknowledged that mandatory spending reductions could become “very tough issues” — though he declined to name which programs would see major cuts:

“These are hard for anybody, no matter where you’re at on the political spectrum.”

While budget writers are well aware of the sensitive nature of their proposal, they feel they have no choice if they want to balance the budget in a decade, which they’ve proposed for years, and give Trump what he wants.

Enraged by Democrats claiming victory after last month’s government funding agreement, White House officials in recent weeks have pressed Hill Republicans to include more Trump priorities in the fiscal 2018 blueprint.

House Budget Republicans hope to incorporate those wishes and are expected, for example, to budget for Trump’s infrastructure plan. Tax reform instructions will also be included in the budget, paving the way for both chambers to use the powerful budget reconciliation process to push a partisan tax bill through Congress on simple majority votes, as well as the $400 billion in mandatory cuts.

“The critique last time was that we didn’t embed enough Trump agenda items into our budget,” said Rep. Dave Brat (R-Va.), a budget panel member. Trump has "made it clear it will be embedded in this budget. … And so people will see a process much more aligned with President Trump’s agenda in this forthcoming budget.”

New spending, however, makes already tough math even trickier for a party whose mantra is “balance the budget in 10 years.” Lawmakers need to cut roughly $8 trillion to meet that goal, budget experts say. And while a quarter of their savings in previous budgets came from repealing Obamacare and slicing $1 trillion from Medicaid, Republicans cannot count on those savings anymore because their health care bill sucked up all but $150 billion of that stash — relatively speaking, mere pocket change to play with.

Republicans’ first reflex would be to turn to entitlement reform to find savings. Medicare and Social Security, after all, account for the lion’s share of government spending and more than 70 percent of all mandatory spending.

But while former Freedom Caucus conservative-turned-White House budget director Mick Mulvaney has tried to convince the president of the merits of such reforms, Trump has refused to back down on his campaign pledge to leave Medicare and Social Security alone. (He’s reversed himself on a vow not to touch Medicaid, which would see $880 billion in cuts under the Obamacare repeal bill passed by the House.)

Mulvaney, sources say, has been huddling on a weekly basis with House Budget Chairwoman Diane Black (R-Tenn.) and Senate Budget Chairman Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.) to plot a path forward. There appears to be some common ground to consider cuts to other smaller entitlement programs: While the Office of Management and Budget would not respond to a request for comment, CQ reported Tuesday that the White House was also considering hundreds of billions in cuts to the same programs being eyed by House budget writers.

“I’ve already started to socialize the discussion around here in the West Wing about how important the mandatory spending is to the drivers of our debt,” Mulvaney told radio host Hugh Hewitt in March. “There are ways that we cannot only allow the president to keep his promise, but to help him keep his promise by fixing some of these mandatory programs.”

Final details of the GOP’s budget plan aren’t expected until June, and specific language mandating the mandatory cuts still hasn’t been written, according to one aide familiar with the process.

Committees would then have several months to put together the department-by-department details on what exactly to cut, proposals that probably won’t land until the fall at the earliest, given the legislative calendar.

The idea could run into problems: It is unclear whether such cuts would be acceptable in the more moderate Senate. In order for the proposal to actually move, Senate Republicans would need to include the same instructions in their own budget.

In the House, Republican leaders hope the moves toward deficit reduction will buy them some good will with conservatives going into September, when the party’s right flank will have to swallow difficult votes to raise the debt ceiling and fund the government.

Cole argued the deficit-trimming push will appeal to the House Freedom Caucus, which blocked the House GOP’s budget on the floor last year in protest of spending levels its members considered too high.

But pleasing conservatives this time around will fuel anxiety on the other end of the conference. Endorsing cuts to programs for the poor will certainly make centrist House Republicans — many of whom were uncomfortable voting to slice Medicaid just weeks ago in the Obamacare repeal bill — very uncomfortable.

Rep. Charlie Dent, a centrist and senior Appropriations Committee member, said budget reconciliation instructions should center solely on tax reform, which “is complex enough on its own,” he said.

“All I can say is: Tax reform by itself is very complex and controversial,” Dent (R-Pa.) said. “Adding some of these other changes will only make the tax reform more difficult.”

Asked about mandatory programs that might be cut, he added: “This will create challenges, no question about it. When so many of the entitlement programs are taken off the table for discussion … that limits our ability to fund the non-defense discretionary programs and other mandatory programs that affect a lot of people.”

GOP backers of the idea will argue in the coming weeks and months that moderates have voted for GOP budgets that included similar cuts in the past — so they should be able to support them again.

But if House GOP leadership has learned anything from the Obamacare repeal debacle, it should be that voting for something that has no chance of becoming law and makes for great campaign fodder is much easier than backing a bill that could be enacted.

Obama Accepts Courage Award With Straight Face

Why The Sally Yates Hearing Was Very Bad News For The Trump White House

The president just lost his favorite piece of spin for countering the Russia scandal.

By David Corn May 8, 2017 5:39 PM

Carolyn Kaster/AP

The much-anticipated Senate hearing on Monday afternoon with former acting attorney general Sally Yates and former director of national intelligence James Clapper confirmed an important point: the Russia story still poses tremendous trouble for President Donald Trump and his crew.

Yates recounted a disturbing tale. She recalled that on January 26, she requested and received a meeting with Don McGahn, Trump's White House counsel. At the time, Vice President Mike Pence and other White House officials were saying that ret. Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, Trump's national security adviser, had not spoken the month before with the Russian ambassador to the United States, Sergey Kislyak, about the sanctions then-President Barack Obama had imposed on the Russians as punishment for Moscow's meddling in the 2016 presidential campaign. Yates' Justice Department had evidence—presumably intercepts of Flynn's communications with Kislyak—that showed this assertion was flat-out false.

At that meeting, Yates shared two pressing concerns with McGahn: that Flynn had lied to the vice president and that Flynn could now be blackmailed by the Russians because they knew he had lied about his conversations with Kislyak. As Yates told the members of the Senate subcommittee on crime and terrorism, "To state the obvious: you don't want your national security adviser compromised by the Russians." She and McGahn also discussed whether Flynn had violated any laws.

The next day, McGahn asked Yates to return to the White House, and they had another discussion. According to Yates, McGahn asked whether it would interfere with the FBI's ongoing investigation of Flynn if the White House took action regarding this matter. No, Yates said she told him. The FBI had already interviewed Flynn. And Yates explained to the senators that she had assumed that the White House would not sit on the information she presented McGahn and do nothing.

But that's what the White House did. McGahn in that second meeting did ask if the White House could review the evidence the Justice Department had. She agreed to make it available. (Yates testified that she did not know whether this material was ever reviewed by the White House. She was fired at that point because she would not support Trump's Muslim travel ban.) Whether McGahn examined that evidence about Flynn, the White House did not take action against him. It stood by Flynn. He remained in the job, hiring staff for the National Security Council and participating in key policy decision-making.

On February 9, the Washington Post revealed that Flynn had indeed spoken with Kislyak about the sanctions. And still the Trump White House backed him up. Four days later, Kellyanne Conway, a top Trump White House official, declared that Trump still had "full confidence" in Flynn. The next day—as a media firestorm continued—Trump fired him. Still, the day after he canned Flynn, Trump declared, "Gen. Flynn is a wonderful man. I think he has been treated very, very unfairly by the media, as I call it, the fake media in many cases. And I think it is really a sad thing that he was treated so badly." Trump displayed no concern about Flynn's misconduct.

The conclusion from Yates' testimony was clear: Trump didn't dump Flynn until the Kislyak matter became a public scandal and embarrassment. The Justice Department warning—hey, your national security adviser could be compromised by the foreign government that just intervened in the American presidential campaign—appeared to have had no impact on Trump's actions regarding Flynn. Imagine what Republicans would say if a President Hillary Clinton retained as national security adviser a person who could be blackmailed by Moscow.

The subcommittee's hearing was also inconvenient for Trump and his supporters on another key topic: it destroyed one of their favorite talking points.

On March 5, Clapper was interviewed by NBC News' Chuck Todd on Meet the Press and asked if there was any evidence of collusion between members of the Trump campaign and the Russians. "Not to my knowledge," Clapper replied. Since then, Trump and his champions have cited Clapper to say there is no there there with the Russia story. Trump on March 20 tweeted, "James Clapper and others stated that there is no evidence Potus colluded with Russia. The story is FAKE NEWS and everyone knows it!" White House press secretary Sean Spicer has repeatedly deployed this Clapper statement to insist there was no collusion.

At Monday's hearing, Clapper pulled this rug out from under the White House and its comrades. He noted that it was standard policy for the FBI not to share with him details about ongoing counterintelligence investigations. And he said he had not been aware of the FBI's investigation of contacts between Trump associates and Russia that FBI director James Comey revealed weeks ago at a House intelligence committee hearing. Consequently, when Clapper told Todd that he was not familiar with any evidence of Trump-Russia collusion, he was speaking accurately. But he essentially told the Senate subcommittee that he was not in a position to know for certain. This piece of spin should now be buried. Trump can no longer hide behind this one Clapper statement.

Clapper also dropped another piece of information disquieting for the Trump camp. Last month, the Guardian reported that British intelligence in late 2015 collected intelligence on suspicious interactions between Trump associates and known or suspected Russian agents and passed this information to to the United States "as part of a routine exchange of information." Asked about this report, Clapper said it was "accurate." He added, "The specifics are quite sensitive." This may well have been the first public confirmation from an intelligence community leader that US intelligence agencies have possessed secret information about ties between Trump's circle and Moscow. (Comey testified that the FBI's counterintelligence investigation of links between Trump associates and Russian began in late July 2016.)

So this hearing indicated that the Trump White House protected a national security adviser who lied and who could be compromised by Moscow, that Trump can no longer cite Clapper to claim there was no collusion, and that US intelligence had sensitive information on interactions between Trump associates and possible Russian agents as early as late 2015. Still, most of the Republicans on the panel focused on leaks and "unmasking"—not the main issues at hand. They collectively pounded more on Yates for her action regarding the Muslim travel ban than on Moscow for its covert operation to subvert the 2016 election to help Trump.

This Senate subcommittee, which is chaired by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), is not mounting a full investigation comparable to the inquiry being conducted by the Senate intelligence committee (and presumably the hobbled House intelligence committee). It has far less staff, and its jurisdiction is limited. But this hearing demonstrated that serious inquiry can expand the public knowledge of the Trump-Russia scandal—and that there remains much more to examine and unearth.

Eric Trump Is Staggeringly Stupid

Did Eric Trump actually think wealthy Russians were dumping money into his dad’s golf courses during a recession because they’re big golf fans? Cenk Uygur, host of The Young Turks, breaks it down.

A Confederacy Of Sociopaths

Kurt Eichenwald: 'and they smiled and high-fived'

https://www.facebook.com/kurt.eichenwald.1/posts/1448157071889590

In 1986, I left a job I loved for one I hated. I had been desperately sick for seven years, with medical bills no one could possibly cover. But I was approaching the dreaded age of 25, when I would be forced off of my parent’s insurance policy. Everyone knew, without insurance, I would die. I was frequently hospitalized. My treatments were very expensive. But the job I loved offered no insurance. The one I hated did.

This was the second time insurance chose the direction of my life. I applied for the job of my dreams a year before. The boss told me he wanted to hire me, but theirs was a small company. They already had a person with high medical costs on salary. If they hired me, he said, their insurer would drop them. Insurance companies could do that back then.

But with the job I hated, I thought I was safe. Then I found out, even the group policy had a preexisting condition clause: I would not be insured for nine months. I could not stay. I would go bankrupt. And so, I went to find another job. All I wanted was insurance. It didn’t matter the job. Insurance would decide my career.
 
I had been a political writer at CBS, an associate editor at National Journal. Very successful at my age. But I only had a few weeks until I was uninsured. I begged a friend at the New York Times to help me. He offered to help me land a position as a copy boy. It was a terrible job, he knew, but it had insurance. At first, I was turned down for the job – I was way too overqualified, the HR person said. But my friend intervened and, after years of personal success, I agreed to take a job fetching people’s coffee.

There was a two-week period before I began my job when I was completely uncovered. I ended up hospitalized. By the time I was conscious, I had rung up a bill in excess of $10,000. That was almost half my expected full-year salary. I called my parents, in tears. I didn’t know what to do. They told me they would take care of it.

Nothing was more depressing than having to have given up everything for insurance, to take a job where everyone was younger than me, everyone was far less experienced than me. And I knew, if I lost my job, I would lose my insurance. And if I lost my insurance, I could die. So I worked – seven days a week, 12-18 hours a day. If nothing else, that helped me believe I would not be fired from my lousy job. But it also gave me the chance to write for various sections of the paper. I would do my copy boy job eight hours a day, then start reporting and writing. This went on for two years – no vacations, no break, terrified every day.

Then, I was offered a junior reporter’s job at the Times. One-year tryout. I worked almost every day. I rarely left the office. I knew the stakes. For me, this wasn’t about being a reporter. This was about keeping my insurance.

In my late 20's, I married. My wife is a doctor. At that point, I had greater freedom. Even if I lost my job, I could be on her insurance. Because of that freedom, I began to write books. If the Times got mad at me for it, it would be ok. But still, I could never shake the belief that I could never say no. I took every assignment. I did not take book leaves. We rarely vacationed.

I finally started to relax around 2008. I had never lost insurance for 12 years. Then, a miracle: the rules keeping people with preexisting conditions from being insured were ended under ACA. I listened to blowhards like Rush Limbaugh rage that people like me – and people with asthma and cancer and cystic fibrosis – were leeches, demanding charity. It amazed me how stupid he and his followers were, not understanding that, without private insurance, people like me would all be on government disability. We would have to stop working in order to survive. People were instilled with rage about a topic they didn’t even understand.

No matter. I knew I would never have to face that problem again. More important, I knew the millions and millions of others like me – young kids, middle aged, whatever – would never again be forced to make decisions about their lives giving up their dreams solely for the insurance. I would hear every day from my wife about people who came to her office in horrible medical shape, people who had gone without treatment or sought their medical care at emergency rooms. People who could only get care in the ER rang up giant medical bills, so expensive no one could pay them. And so the taxpayers picked up the cost. Now, those same people were getting care from my wife with insurance they purchased. Opponents raged about their taxes paying for the subsidies, so ignorant they had no idea their taxes had been paying for the far more expensive emergency room care before.

Last week, the House passed a bill that would push everyone with preexisting conditions back into the same situation. The representatives billowed and cooed that high-risk pools would protect us, fooling the same uneducated ones who didn’t know they paid for the uninsured. High risk pools had been tried before. They failed. But these members of congress probably didn’t even know that. They didn’t care enough to hold hearings to find out whether high-risk pools would work. They didn’t wait to find out how many people would lose their insurance. They had to rush it through. Then they cheered for themselves.

Meanwhile, those of us with preexisting conditions were plunged back into fear. Foundations for people with chronic diseases began receiving phone calls from panicked people. My wife and I reviewed our options if this bill became law. We are middle aged now, which presented new issues. She is four years older than me. She hits retirement age in five years. If she retired and was on Medicare, I would be clinging to a slender thread to keep my insurance. I could never write another book. It would be too dangerous. My wife said she would work until she was almost 70 to keep me safe. Guilt overwhelmed me. She was born in Britain, and we discussed her citizenship and, if necessary, we could move there if I lost my coverage. We would have to burn through our savings for a long time, but eventually I might be able to get onto national health insurance.

But I don’t want to leave America. I don’t want my wife to work until she’s almost 70. I don’t want to be guilty. And most important, I don’t want all the other people with preexisting conditions to be forced to make their life decisions based on where they can get group insurance. Or worse, to not be able to obtain group insurance, be denied private insurance and die.

I watched Fox News. They giggled and laughed that people were being hysterical about preexisting conditions. There were high-risk pools, they sneered, that states could participate in unless they didn’t want to. I watched the clip, over and over, of those self-congratulatory members of Congress, high-fiving and smiling, as I knew the situation at my house was playing out at millions of houses where talking points and rationalizations didn’t change the realities of what we would face. I commented about how terrible this was. And then I saw comments from people deriding those with preexisting conditions as wanting charity.

I thought of members of Congress who wanted prisons as brutal as possible, until they themselves were jailed; then, they became advocates for prison reform. I thought of the ones who screamed about gays until their child came out, then they became tolerant. I thought about the members of Congress who happily sent other people’s children off to fight in Vietnam, while getting their own kids deferments and spots in the National Guard or reserves, making sure they wouldn’t see battle. And then I thought of the child whose parents home I visited, who told me of their boy dying of suffocation in his mother’s arms as they rushed to the hospital. They hadn’t been able to afford his inhaler that week. They had no insurance. They planned to buy it the week that followed. Their son died two days after they decided to take the risk.

And the members of Congress smiled and high-fived.

More people’s children would die. And the members of Congress smiled and high-fived. People would be forced to take jobs they did not want or marry people they did not love. And the members of Congress smiled and high-fived. For millions, every day would be terrifying as they wondered if they would they run up bills that day that would bankrupt them or would they be unable to get treatment? Would they live through the week? And the members of Congress smiled and high-fived.

My anger exploded. I wanted them to feel the consequences of what they thought was so wonderful. Why should they be exempt from the damage they would inflict on others from their vote, votes they cast with so little concern about others that they didn’t hold hearings to find out what damage they might cause?

And so I tweeted, “As one with a preexisting condition, I hope every GOPr who voted for Trumpcare get a long-term condition, loses their insurance, and die.”

Harsh? You bet. I wanted the words to be blunt, to lay out the reality of what real people would face, people who didn’t have the ability of members of Congress to avoid the consequences they voted to inflict on real people.

Conservatives broke out the fainting couches. I was wishing Republicans to die, they moaned. I forgot we live in an era where fools will interpret it the way they are told. One of the propagandists at the Daily Caller, after emailing me for comment at 3:00 in the morning, posted a story proclaiming I wanted my political opponents to die. And the conservative trolls descended, screaming for my death.

I remain angry. I remember the tears of that woman whose son died in her arms. I remember my struggles. I remembered my fears. I remembered the fears of so many others I have spoken to over the years who struggled with preexisting conditions.

I deleted the tweet. Apparently, confronting people with the reality of what they have chosen is just too inappropriate. Voting to let people die is fine, rubbing the fact that they voted to do that is just wrong.

Do I regret what I said? No. I want those words to sink in. My tweet won’t kill anyone. But the vote from those members of Congress will.

And if they are not forced to confront what they are doing, they will just keep smiling and high-fiving.