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.
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.
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:
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:
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.
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.)
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.”
WASHINGTON
President Donald Trump’s plan to
eliminate dozens of federal agencies and programs has collapsed, as a
conservative Republican Congress refuses to go along.
Among the programs spared are
agencies promoting rural business development and the arts, the
Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Community Development Block Grants
and the National Wildlife Refuge Fund. Those and many others are getting
money in bills approved by the GOP-run House appropriations committee.
The House plans to vote on spending bills throughout next week, and the
Senate is expected to consider spending plans shortly.
Trump unveiled his $4.1 trillion budget plan in March, pledging to “reduce the federal government to redefine its proper role and promote efficiency.”
But in the House, where all 435
members face voters next fall, budget legislation has far more money
than Trump had sought for a host of programs. The spending bill for
agriculture contains $4.64 billion beyond what Trump requested, an
increase of about 30 percent. For interior and the environment, the bump
was $4.3 billion or 16 percent. For transportation, housing and urban
development, the committee approved $8.6 billion, about 18 percent, more
than the budget request.
"There’s that old saying in
Washington that the president proposes and Congress disposes," said
Steve Ellis, vice president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, a nonpartisan
fiscal watchdog.
Indeed, after many House and Senate Republicans complained to Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney in hearings about the impact of some of Trump’s cuts, congressional budget-writers quickly made sure they don’t happen.
For example, instead of slashing the Appalachian Regional Commission,
the House Appropriations Committee last week approved $130 million for
the independent agency, created 52 years ago, that helps fund
infrastructure and job-training projects in Ohio, North Carolina, South
Carolina, Missouri, Mississippi, Pennsylvania and other Appalachian
states that Trump won in 2016.
Lawmakers including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., to Rep. Phil Roe, R-Tenn., vowed that doing away with the ARC wasn’t going to happen.
"I am very proud that the House
Appropriations Committee approved a bill that includes important funding
for the ARC, an organization that does a great deal of good in East
Tennessee and rural Appalachia," Roe said.
Even agencies and programs
conservative Republicans purport to dislike are avoiding the Capitol ax.
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting has been on the list of
programs many conservatives and Republicans have wanted to defund since
Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., was House Speaker in the 1990's.
Trump wants it off the federal books, too, but House appropriators instead included $445 million for the agency.
The National Endowment for the Arts
and the National Endowment for the Humanities have also been favorite
conservative targets, and got a death sentence in Trump’s budget plan.
That didn’t stop the House Appropriations Committee from approving $145
million for each endowment last week with plenty of Republican help.
"Throughout this year, we’ve seen
some of the Republican members of that committee saying that they were
working hard to make sure that the NEA would be receiving significant
funding and certainly rejecting the administration’s termination
proposal," said Narric Rome, vice president for government affairs for
the Americans for the Arts, an advocacy group.
All this still enrages plenty of conservatives.
"The problem with the Republicans is
that so many of them aren’t team players," said Chris Edwards, director
of tax policies studies at the libertarian-leaning Cato Institute and
editor of DownsizingGovernment.org. "They’re parochial or, with
appropriators, it’s just a single-minded devotion to increase spending
on the programs that they fund."
Edwards said he was stunned when
leading Republicans railed against Trump’s budget plan to eliminate the
Community Block Grant Development program, which allocates funds
initiatives from affordable housing to after school programs.
House appropriators approved $2.9 billion for CDBG, $100 million less than its Fiscal 2017 funding level.
"Appropriators and other Republican
congressmen, they love to give speeches about fiscal responsibility,
they love to complain how Obama was a big spender, but now’s the real
test," he said.
"Trump has given them the way forward here with some
reasonable cuts. Can they rise above their parochial interests and do
something that’s good for the overall budget here?."
Other budget-watchers note that the
real money issues aren’t even being addressed. Marc Goldwein, senior
vice president and senior policy director for the nonpartisan Committee
for a Responsible Federal Budget, said that even Trump’s cuts ignore the
fastest growing parts of the federal budget, entitlements like Social
Security and Medicare.
"To me, it just doesn’t seem to make
much sense to be focusing all our energy on cutting the slowest growing
part of the budget," he said.
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.
The moment Anthony Scaramucci presented his business card to President
Trump, the deal was a good as done. Sean Spicer was on his way out, with
Mr. Smooth installed as White House communications director.Scaramucci
checks all the boxes for Trump: Goldman Sachs background, ties to
Russia, Wall Street insider, enormous amounts of hair product, prepared
to say anything and most importantly, in love with himself and the
President. Truly a match made in heaven
Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, during a briefing last month.Credit
Doug Mills/The New York Times
WASHINGTON
— Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, resigned on Friday
morning, telling Trump he vehemently disagreed with the
appointment of the New York financier Anthony Scaramucci as
communications director.
Mr.
Trump offered Mr. Scaramucci the job at 10 A.M. Trump requested
that Mr. Spicer stay on, but Mr. Spicer told Mr. Trump that he believed
the appointment was a major mistake, according to a person with direct
knowledge of the exchange.
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.
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.
In a break with his boss, Thomas Bossert said Russian entities clearly tried to meddle in the 2016 race.
By Ali Watkins
07/20/2017 12:49 PM EDT
The hacking and subsequent release of stolen Democratic National Committee emails last year were “unacceptable efforts and behaviors by a foreign nation state,” Thomas Bossert said on Thursday. Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images
ASPEN, CO — Donald Trump’s chief counter-terrorism adviser said
Thursday that the Russian government clearly tried to manipulate the
2016 election, and declared that the Obama administration’s retaliatory
sanctions didn’t go far enough.
“There’s a pretty clear and easy answer to this and it’s 'yes,'”
Thomas Bossert said when asked whether the Russians worked to manipulate
the U.S. election — a widely held conclusion that his boss in the Oval
Office has repeatedly questioned.
The Obama White House’s response — kicking out 35 diplomats and
closing two Russian diplomatic facilities in December — “wasn’t adequate
in my mind,” Bossert, a top national security aide under former
President George W. Bush, added during a wide-ranging discussion at the
National Security Forum in Aspen.
Trump has repeatedly questioned the U.S. intelligence community’s
conclusion that Moscow meddled in the 2016 election with the intent of
helping Trump win. Trump said he pressed Russian President Vladimir
Putin on the issue during their recent meeting at the G-20 in Germany,
but the two sides offered different accounts, with Russia saying Trump
accepted Putin’s denials.
The hacking and subsequent release of stolen Democratic National
Committee emails last year were “unacceptable efforts and behaviors by a
foreign nation state,” Bossert said on Thursday. He stressed, though,
that there had been no manipulation of ballot counts.
The administration is not yet in a place to crack down harder on
Russia, Bossert said, but is exploring how to deter cyber-attacks.
There’s “no evidence,” he said, that offensive cyber operations deter
foreign hackers, so the White House is exploring more “draconian”
retaliations, like financial penalties.
Those cyber policies are in the works, he said, but their
implementation — including potential responses to aggressive cyber-attacks from countries like Russia — will take longer than most
would prefer.
“We’ll satisfy you, but we won’t satisfy you in enough time,” Bossert said.
The question of Russian interference in the 2016 election — including
whether any of Trump’s associates colluded with the Kremlin — has
clouded Trump’s presidency. Special counsel Robert Mueller and multiple
congressional committees are probing not only the issue of election
meddling, but other related issues — including whether Trump obstructed
justice by firing FBI Director James Comey.
Bossert touched on several other controversial topics, including
Syria, U.S. detention and interrogation policies, and the creation of a bio-defense force.
The administration continues to explore long-term detention
facilities for captured combatants overseas, including the use of the
Guantánamo Bay detention facility, Bossert said. Further, the White
House is keeping “all options open” when it comes to reopening notorious
black site secret prisons overseas, he said.
Bossert underscored the Trump administration’s commitment to Syria,
but said Syrian President Bashar Assad’s departure was not a top
priority. The White House has reportedly ended a covert program
dedicated to arming anti-Assad groups.
“It’s not important for us to say Assad must go first,” Bossert said,
but added, “The U.S. would still like to see Assad go at some point.”
The Trump adviser repeatedly chastised his interviewer, New York
Times national security reporter David Sanger, about his newspaper’s
coverage of classified U.S. programs. He also strongly objected to a
Times article that he said unfairly implied the U.S. has responsibility
for the effects of computer vulnerability exploitation programs designed
by the U.S. government which fall into foreign hands and are used for
malicious purposes.
Bossert also said the Trump administration would develop a
comprehensive plan to defend the nation against bio-terrorism, an issue
he said has been dangerously neglected, and which has taken on new
urgency because of rapidly advancing biotechnology that allows for the
creation of synthetic viruses.
Bossert said scientists may now be able to create a synthetic
smallpox virus without access to the only two known laboratory samples
of the deadly disease — a prospect he called terrifying.
The hacking and subsequent release of stolen Democratic National Committee emails last year were “unacceptable efforts and behaviors by a foreign nation state,” Thomas Bossert said on Thursday. Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images