Status Coup's Jordan Chariton reports on Joe Biden's campaign putting out health disinformation regarding Corona Virus and voting in Arizona, Ohio, Illinois, and Florida.
Republican Congressman Devin Nunes is not a doctor, and he doesn't seem to be capable of taking advice from doctors, either.
As the CDC recommends avoiding crowded places during this pandemic, Nunes actually went on Fox News to tell viewers to IGNORE that advice and go out to dinner and go have drinks at your local bar.
This is advice that could end up getting people killed, as Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins explains.
Cenk Uygur, John Iadarola, and Adrienne Lawrence discuss Biden's record on Social Security on The Young Turks coverage of the Democratic presidential debate between Sen. Bernie Sanders and former Vice President Joe Biden.
According to reports, Donald Trump had been whistling past the graveyard with regards to the Covid-19 outbreak, and only started taking the issue seriously when he saw Fox News talk about how it was hurting the stock market.
What the resident doesn’t realize is that the constant lies and coverups from his administration are what’s driving the market downward. Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins discusses this.
On CNN, Van Jones warned the Democratic Party against completely dismissing the Bernie Sanders wave of the Democratic Party, warning that they will lose against Trump if they do.
The evidence is in: Joe Biden has a habit of making things up. And it’s
not just wrong — it could hurt him in a general election contest against
Donald Trump.
According to The Intercept's Mehdi Hasan, if you think
the guy who made up getting arrested in South Africa, who falsely
claimed to have marched in the civil rights movement, is the “safe”
candidate against Trump, then you’re lying to yourself.
Joe Biden gave his Coronavirus virtual press conference via zoom, where he misspeaks multiple times, and then wanders off during the conference as the Biden team is forced to put up a picture to cover him walking away.
Rep. Jim Clyburn endorsed Joe Biden despite Biden's lack of policy to assist black, poor, students or middle-class families. Tim Black calls it out.
"The U.S. government's response to the COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak has been "much, much worse than almost any other country that's been affected," Ashish Jha, who runs the Harvard Global Health Institute, told NPR on Thursday. "I still don't understand why we don't have extensive testing. Vietnam! Vietnam has tested more people than America has."
Without testing, he added, "you have no idea how extensive the infection is," and "we have to shut schools, events, and everything down, because that's the only tool available to us until we get testing back up. It's been stunning to me how bad the federal response has been."
--Donald Trump's administration's refusal to accept the test made available by the WHO as the CDC tried and failed to develop a test is partially responsible for the advancing outbreak
The Trump campaign this week is highlighting Joe Biden's public gaffes in attempt to paint him as confused. But is Windsor Mann right in saying there's nothing Biden does that Trump doesn't do worse? Aired on 03/11/2020.
In her first interview since the impeachment inquiry, resident Trump's
former top adviser on Russia tells 60 Minutes the Russians didn't invent
partisan divides in America, but "they understand how to exploit them."
See the full interview, Sunday.
Jesse Dollemore discusses the very real threat posed by the Coronavirus. Experts are comparing it to the "Spanish Flu" of 1918.
Donald Trump is trying to be Conspiracist-in-Chief and Commander-in-Chief while simultaneously passing the buck to science denier nutter butter Mike Pence to lead the U.S. government response to the pandemic.
It's a sad day for those who enjoy watching flecks of spittle appear
on the mouth corners of bloviating news personalities. Chris Matthews
(74) has "retired" from MSNBC after over 20 salivary years as a hot take
opinion spewer and conductor of condescending interviews with women.
The straw that broke the blonde camel's back was likely to have been
this recent article in GQ
by Laura Bassett that describes a number of incidents highlighting
Matthews' sexist behavior, putting him in the league of misogynists like
Bill O'Reilly:
Matthews has a pattern of making comments about women’s
appearances in demeaning ways. The number of on-air incidents is long,
exhausting, and creepy, including commenting to Erin Burnett, for
example, “You’re a knockout...it’s all right getting bad news from you,”
while telling her to move closer to the camera. Behind the scenes, one
of Matthews’s former producers told The Daily Caller in 2017 that he
allegedly rated his female guests on a numerical scale and would name a
“hottest of the week,” like a “teenage boy.” In 1999, an assistant
producer accused Matthews of sexual harassment, which CNBC, the show's
network at the time, investigated. They concluded that the comments were
"inappropriate," and Matthews received a “stern reprimand,” according
to an MSNBC spokesperson.
Chris Matthews announced his abrupt retirement from MSNBC Monday night after more than two decades at the network.
The MSNBC mainstay made the stunning announcement at the start of Monday’s night edition of Hardball,
a show that has for years been a staple of the network’s politics
programming. It also became a thorn for MSNBC brass in recent weeks as
Matthews was accused of sexual harassment and came under fire for his
often out-of-touch commentary.
“Let me start with my headline tonight,” Matthews said. “I’m retiring. This is the last Hardball on MSNBC.”
“After conversations with MSNBC I decided tonight would be my last Hardball,
so let me tell you why,” Matthews said. “The younger generations out
there are ready to take the reins. You see them in politics, in the
media, in fighting for the causes.”
“A lot of them have to do with how we talk to each other,” he
continued. “Compliments on a woman’s appearance that some men, included
me, might have once incorrectly thought were okay, were never okay. Not
then and certainly not today, and for making such comments in the past
I’m sorry.”
After a commercial break Matthews had left the Hardball set, with a stunned Steve Kornacki
hosting the show in his stead. MSNBC told Mediaite a rotating cast of
anchors will fill in for Matthews until a permanent replacement is
selected.
Critics called on Matthews to resign or be fired after he comparedBernie Sanders’
recent victory in the Nevada caucuses to the Nazi defeat of the French
during World War II. The comment prompted private complaints to MSNBC
from senior Sanders staffers and a rare on-air apology from Matthews himself.
That apology did little to stanch the criticism, as calls for his firing were renewed after a combative interview with Elizabeth Warren was decried as sexist. The interview prompted journalist Laura Bassett, a frequent MSNBC guest, to allege in an op-ed that Matthews made sexist and belittling comments to her off the air.
“Why haven’t I fallen in love with you yet?” Bassett said Matthews
told her. “Keep putting makeup on her, I’ll fall in love with her.”
Matthews, who is retiring from the network at 74, was left out of MSNBC’s coverage of the South Carolina primary on Saturday.
In 1999, he was formally reprimanded by CNBC after a female staffer
accused him of making inappropriate comments. He made a series of
inappropriate comments throughout his time at MSNBC, including an ill-advised joke told to Hillary Clinton about a “Bill Cosby pill” in 2016.
Not only did these employees not know they were supposed to wear gear,
but they went back into the community immediately after being exposed to
the dangerous virus.
If it seemed like Tuesday night’s debate audience was a little hostile to certain candidates, that’s because it was. The debate audience was packed with the wealthy elite and high-dollar donors, with tickets ranging from $1,700 to more than $3,000.
Average Americans were shut out of the debate, allowing the wealthy to make their voices heard to those on stage. Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins explains the impact this had on the debate.
It started as a stupid joke, as these things do. I watched a video that Donald Trump had posted to his Twitter account where he was talking directly to the camera right outside the White House. He's done a bunch of these, and they have the air of a needy vlogger desperate for likes (which, to be fair, is what Trump was before resident).
I was struck by how it was filmed, making it look like he was missing something, so I tweeted the dumb joke "Where's your fucking neck?" That's a Rocky Horror reference for you young'uns reading this, from when it was a midnight movie staple and we'd shout things at the screen. Give us a break. We didn't have the internet, and porn took some effort to obtain. We'd yell the neck line any time the narrator appeared.
That was it. That was what I meant.
Then eagle-eyed reader Al Petterson took me more literally (as did several others) and said, "Watch that neckline. The body is not the head. This is two videos blue-screened together." So I did and, holy crap, that's exactly what it looked like. Or, more precisely, it looked like someone had digitally removed Trump's pronounced neck wattle, the prominent flesh sag that, when pinched together by a collar and tie, has the quality of a puffy vulva. Sometimes, it does lop over his collar but certainly not smoothly.
I took a screenshot which, sorry, I'll share:
Look at the smoothing on his neck. Wanna see it closer? No? Too bad.
I haven't touched it up. Look at the line between the collar and "neck." When you watch the video, you see it the digitized line (or whatever the term of art is) even more clearly. In fact, the aforementioned Al Petterson took it on himself to put together this video that focuses in on the neck area as it moves and, gotta say, it's freaky:
Other videos, some recorded at the sametime as the first one here, have the same effect. It's seemingly there in more videos posted by Trump or the White House. But weirdly, it's not in a video from a couple of months ago where he's doing the same thing, speaking outside the White House.
The wattle camel toe is clear.
Look, there are way, way more important things going on. And I don't think anyone is gonna be surprised if he does demand he's turkey skin be airbrushed out. But the man is incredibly vain, and going at his vanity is one way to screw with his deranged brain as we approach the general election.
And if #Wattlegate gets under his digitally-tightened skin, so much the better.
(Credit where it's due: Twitterizer Ralph of Nazareth came up with "Wattlegate." And it's awesome.)
A classified briefing to lawmakers angered the resident, who complained that Democrats would “weaponize” the disclosure.
American
intelligence agencies concluded that Russia, on the orders of President
Vladimir V. Putin, interfered in the 2016 presidential election.Credit...Emmanuel Dunand/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
WASHINGTON
— Intelligence officials warned House lawmakers last week that Russia
was interfering in the 2020 campaign to try to get resident Trump
re-elected, five people familiar with the matter said, a disclosure to
Congress that angered Mr. Trump, who complained that Democrats would use
it against him.
The day after the
Feb. 13 briefing to lawmakers, Mr. Trump berated Joseph Maguire, the
outgoing acting director of national intelligence, for allowing it to
take place, people familiar with the exchange said. Mr. Trump cited the
presence in the briefing of Representative Adam B. Schiff, the
California Democrat who led the impeachment proceedings against him, as a
particular irritant.
During the
briefing to the House Intelligence Committee, Mr. Trump’s allies
challenged the conclusions, arguing that he has been tough on Russia and
strengthened European security. Some intelligence officials viewed the
briefing as a tactical error, saying that had the official who delivered
the conclusion spoken less pointedly or left it out, they would have
avoided angering the Republicans.
That
intelligence official, Shelby Pierson, is an aide to Mr. Maguire who
has a reputation of delivering intelligence in somewhat blunt terms. The resident announced on Wednesday that he was replacing Mr. Maguire with
Richard Grenell, the ambassador to Germany and long an aggressively
vocal Trump supporter.
Though
some current and former officials speculated that the briefing may have
played a role in the removal of Mr. Maguire, who had told people in
recent days that he believed he would remain in the job, two
administration officials said the timing was coincidental. Mr. Grenell
had been in discussions with the administration about taking on new
roles, they said, and Mr. Trump had never felt a kinship with Mr.
Maguire.
Spokeswomen for the Office of
the Director of National Intelligence and its election security office
declined to comment. A White House spokesman did not immediately respond
to requests for comment.
A Democratic
House intelligence committee official called the Feb. 13 briefing an
important update about “the integrity of our upcoming elections” and
said that members of both parties attended, including Representative
Devin Nunes of California, the top Republican on the committee.
Image
Joseph
Maguire, the acting director of national intelligence, is planning to
leave government, according to an American official.Credit...Erin Schaff/The New York Times
Mr.
Trump has long accused the intelligence community’s assessment of
Russia’s 2016 interference as the work of a “deep-state” conspiracy
intent on undermining the validity of his election. Intelligence
officials feel burned by their experience after the last election, where
their work became subject of intense political debate and is now a
focus of a Justice Department investigation.
Part
of the resident’s anger over the intelligence briefing stemmed from
the administration’s reluctance to provide sensitive information to Mr.
Schiff. He has been a leading critic of Mr. Trump since 2016, doggedly
investigating Russian election interference and later leading the
impeachment inquiry into the resident’s dealings with Ukraine.
After
asking about the briefing that the Office of the Director of National
Intelligence and other agencies gave to the House, Mr. Trump complained
that Mr. Schiff would “weaponize” the intelligence about Russia’s
support for him, according to a person familiar with the briefing. And
he was angry that no one had told him sooner about the briefing, the
person said.
Mr. Trump has fixated on
Mr. Schiff since the impeachment saga began, pummeling him publicly with
insults and unfounded accusations of corruption. At one point in
October, Mr. Trump refused to invite lawmakers from the congressional
intelligence committees to a White House briefing on Syria because he
did not want Mr. Schiff there, according to three people briefed on the
matter.
Mr. Trump did not erupt at Mr.
Maguire, and instead just asked pointed questions, according to the
person. But the message was unmistakable: He was displeased by what took
place.
Ms. Pierson, officials said,
was delivering the conclusion of multiple intelligence agencies, not her
own opinion. The Washington Post first reported the Oval Office confrontation between Mr. Trump and Mr. Maguire.
The intelligence community issued an assessment in early 2017 that President Vladimir V. Putin personally ordered
an influence campaign in the previous year’s election and developed “a
clear preference for resident-elect Trump.” But Republicans have long
argued that Moscow’s campaign was designed to sow chaos, not aid Mr.
Trump specifically.
And some
Republicans have accused the intelligence agencies of opposing Mr.
Trump, but intelligence officials reject those allegations. They
fiercely guard their work as nonpartisan, saying it is the only way to
ensure its validity.
At
the House briefing, Representative Chris Stewart, a Utah Republican who
has been considered for the director’s post, was among the Republicans
who challenged the conclusion about Russia’s support for the resident.
Mr. Stewart insisted that Mr. Trump has aggressively confronted Moscow,
providing anti-tank weapons to Ukraine for its war against
Russian-backed separatists and strengthening the NATO alliance with new
resources, according to two people briefed on the meeting.
Mr.
Stewart declined to discuss the briefing but said that Moscow had no
reason to support Mr. Trump. He pointed to the resident’s work to
confront Iran, a Russian ally, and encourage European energy
independence from Moscow. “I’d challenge anyone to give me a real-world
argument where Putin would rather have resident Trump and not Bernie
Sanders,” the nominal Democratic primary front-runner, Mr. Stewart said
in an interview.
Mr.
Trump believes that Russian efforts to get him elected in 2016 have
cast doubts about the legitimacy of his campaign victory. Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times
Under
Mr. Putin, Russian intelligence has long sought broadly to sow chaos
among adversaries around the world. The United States and key allies on
Thursday accused Russian military intelligence, the group responsible
for much of the 2016 election interference in the United States, of a cyber-attack on neighboring Georgia that took out websites and television
broadcasts.
Though intelligence
officials have previously informed lawmakers that Russia’s interference
campaign was ongoing, last week’s briefing did contain what appeared to
be new information, including that Russia intends to interfere with the
ongoing Democratic primaries as well as the general election.
They
have made more creative use of Facebook and other social media. Rather
than impersonating Americans as they did in 2016, Russian operatives are
working to get Americans to repeat disinformation to get around social
media companies’ rules that prohibit “inauthentic speech.”
And
they are working from servers located in the United States, rather than
abroad, knowing that American intelligence agencies are prohibited from
operating inside the country. (The F.B.I. and the Department of
Homeland Security can, with aid from the intelligence agencies.)
Russian
hackers have also infiltrated Iran’s cyber-warfare unit, perhaps with
the intent of launching attacks that would look like they were coming
from Tehran, the National Security Agency has warned.
Some
officials believe that foreign powers, possibly including Russia, could
use ransomware attacks, like those that have debilitated some local
governments, to damage or interfere with voting systems or registration
databases.
Still, much of the Russian
aim is similar to its 2016 interference, officials said: Search for
issues that stir controversy in the United States and use various
methods to stoke division.
One of
Moscow’s main goals is undermining confidence in American election
systems, intelligence officials have told lawmakers, seeking to sow
doubts over close elections and recounts. Confronting those Russian
efforts is difficult, officials have said, because they want to maintain
American confidence in voting systems.
Both
Republicans and Democrats asked the intelligence agencies to hand over
the underlying material that prompted their conclusion that Russia again
is favoring Mr. Trump’s election.
How
soon the House committee might get that information is not clear. Since
the impeachment inquiry, tensions have risen between the Office of the
Director of National Intelligence and the committee. As officials
navigate the disputes, the intelligence agencies have slowed the amount
of material they provide to the House, officials said. The agencies are
required by law to regularly brief Congress on threats.
While
Republicans have long been critical of the Obama administration for not
doing enough to track and deter Russian interference in 2016, current
and former intelligence officials said the party is at risk of making a
similar mistake now. Mr. Trump has been reluctant to even hear about
election interference, and Republicans dislike discussing it publicly.
The
aftermath of last week’s briefing prompted some intelligence officials
to voice concerns that the White House will dismantle a key election
security effort by Dan Coats, the former director of national
intelligence: the establishment of an election interference czar. Ms. Pierson has held the post since last summer.
And
some current and former intelligence officials expressed fears that Mr.
Grenell may have been put in place explicitly to slow the pace of
information on election interference to Congress. The revelations about
Mr. Trump’s confrontation with Mr. Maguire raised new concerns about Mr.
Grenell’s appointment, said the Democratic House committee official,
who added that the upcoming election could be more vulnerable to foreign
interference.
Mr. Trump, former
officials have said, is typically uninterested in election interference
briefings, and Mr. Grenell might see it as unwise to emphasize such
intelligence with the resident.
“The
biggest concern I would have is if the intelligence community was not
forthcoming and not providing the analysis in the run-up to the next
election,” said Andrea Kendall-Taylor, a former intelligence official
now with the Center for New American Security. “It is really concerning
that this is happening in the run-up to an election.”
Mr.
Grenell’s unbridled loyalty is clearly important to Mr. Trump but may
not be ideally suited for an intelligence chief making difficult
decisions about what to brief to the resident and Congress, Ms.
Kendall-Taylor said.
“Trump is trying
to whitewash or rewrite the narrative about Russia’s involvement in the
election,” she said. “Grenell’s appointment suggests he is really
serious about that.”
The
acting deputy to Mr. Maguire, Andrew P. Hallman, will step down on
Friday, officials said, paving the way for Mr. Grenell to put in place
his own management team. Mr. Hallman was the intelligence office’s
principal executive, but since the resignation in August of the previous
deputy, Sue Gordon, he has been performing the duties of that post.
Mr. Maguire is planning to leave government, according to an American official.
Eric Schmitt and David E. Sanger contributed reporting.
Adam Goldman reports on the F.B.I. from Washington and is a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner. @adamgoldmanNYT
Julian
E. Barnes is a national security reporter based in Washington, covering
the intelligence agencies. Before joining The Times in 2018, he wrote
about security matters for The Wall Street Journal. @julianbarnes•Facebook
Maggie
Haberman is a White House correspondent. She joined The Times in 2015
as a campaign correspondent and was part of a team that won a Pulitzer
Prize in 2018 for reporting on resident Trump’s advisers and their
connections to Russia. @maggieNYT
Nicholas
Fandos is a national reporter based in the Washington bureau. He has
covered Congress since 2017 and is part of a team of reporters who have
chronicled investigations by the Justice Department and Congress into residentt Trump and his administration. @npfandos
"resident Donald Trump on Tuesday granted clemency to 11 people, including several convicted felons who are either Fox News regulars or have been championed by the resident’s favorite cable-news network. And in another case, the family of one pardon recipient dished out massive contributions to the resident’s re-election campaign just months before Trump’s clemency spree.
Among those granted pardons or sentence commutations were former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who was sentenced to 14 years in prison for attempting to sell former President Barack Obama’s Senate seat; former New York City police commissioner Bernard Kerik, who was sentenced to four years in 2010 for tax fraud and lying to the feds; and Michael Milken, the “junk-bonds king” whose early-90's insider-trading conviction made him a poster boy of white-collar crime."
Similar to Trump's destruction of the Republican Party, Michael Bloomberg's take over of the DNC Rules will destroy whatever's left of the Democratic Party.
George Zimmerman is suing Democratic presidential candidates Pete Buttigieg and Elizabeth Warren
for defamation over tweets they posted about the shooting death of
unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin. Zimmerman's lawsuit accuses them
of "maliciously publishing false and misleading" tweets about the case
in order to "garner votes in the black community."
Zimmerman filed the lawsuit Tuesday in Florida, seeking $265 million "for loss of good will and reputation" and financial damages.
In 2012, Zimmerman shot and killed 17-year-old Martin when
he encountered the teen walking to his father's home nearby. Zimmerman
was later acquitted after his lawyers argued he was acting in
self-defense, provoking widespread protests.
Both Democratic candidates published the tweets on February 5, which would have been Trayvon Martin's 25th birthday.
"My
heart goes out to [Martin's mother] @SybrinaFulton and Trayvon's family
and friends. He should still be with us today. We need to end gun
violence and racism. And we need to build a world where all of our
children-especially young Black boys-can grow up safe and free,"
Elizabeth Warren tweeted to her 3.7 million followers.
My heart goes out to @SybrinaFulton and Trayvon's family and friends. He should still be with us today.
We
need to end gun violence and racism. And we need to build a world where
all of our children—especially young Black boys—can grow up safe and
free. https://t.co/9lXXlRnvzL
— Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) February 6, 2020
"Trayvon Martin would have been 25 today. How many 25th
birthdays have been stolen from us by white supremacy, gun violence,
prejudice, and fear?" Pete Buttigieg said in his tweet.
Trayvon Martin would have been 25 today.
How many 25th birthdays have been stolen from us by white supremacy, gun violence, prejudice, and fear?#BlackLivesMatter
— Pete Buttigieg (@PeteButtigieg) February 5, 2020
In his lawsuit, Zimmerman claims the tweets defame him by
suggesting to millions of followers that his actions were a result of
"white supremacy, gun violence, prejudice, and fear" of Martin's skin
color. George Zimmerman in court in 2013.
Getty
"Defendant Warren's use of the
word 'racism' as having caused the death of Trayvon Martin is a smear
that disparages and defames Zimmerman, a man who is Hispanic, a minority
advocate, and an Obama supporter," the lawsuit reads. "...Defendant
Warren knows that as established in the 2013 trial and in the media,
that Zimmerman fired a single shot only because he believed he might go
unconscious and die."
The lawsuit claims Buttigieg's and Warren's
"preconceived plan to discredit and destroy Zimmerman" was part of their
political strategy to gain black votes. Polls have shown the two candidates lagging in support among African American voters.
But
CBSN legal contributor Keir Dougall, a former federal prosecutor and
trial lawyer, says Zimmerman would face an "uphill climb" trying to
prove his case in court.
Because Zimmerman is a public figure, to win his claim he "would have
to prove that the statements were knowingly false or reckless to the
truth," Dougall explained. That's a high bar. And at the same time, the
First Amendment offers a great deal of protection to Warren and
Buttigieg to exercise their right to free speech.
"One of the core
types of speech the First Amendment protects is political speech, and
you've got two presidential candidates tweeting in their campaigns —
that's obviously political speech," Dougall said. "The First Amendment
would be at its strongest in protecting this particular type of speech."
In 2014, a Florida judge threw out a libel suit
Zimmerman filed against a news organization on the grounds that he was a
public figure and could not prove the outlet acted with reckless
disregard for the truth.
CBS News has reached out to the Buttigieg and Warren campaigns for comment and will update this story if they provide responses.
Rob Reiner
✔
@robreiner
Today’s revelation of Trump’s bribe of Assange is further evidence
of what we all know to be true: Trump colluded with Russia to steal the
2016 election. He’s trying to do it again. That’s what Criminals do.
Whoa if true. Julian Assange is in court
in England today and the claim that he was offered a pardon to cover up
Russian involvement in the DNC hack is going to blow up the news.
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange told a British court on Tuesday that
he had been promised a pardon by people close to resident Donald
Trump.
Assange made the remarks while appearing at a pretrial hearing via teleconference.
Courtroom reporter James Doleman broke the news on Twitter. According
to Doleman, Assange said that the pardon was conditional on him publicly announcing that Russia had nothing to do with the attack on the 2016 election.
Breaking, at
pre-trial hearing for Julian Assange a court has heard that he will be
calling a witness who will allege he was offered a pardon by the US
government, if he would say Russia was not involved in the leak of DNC
documents during the 2006 election.
Julian Assange
court appearance today- His lawyer mentioned a statement, that alleges
former US Congressman Dana Rohrabacher visited Assange, saying he was
there on behalf of the President, offering a pardon if JA would say
Russia had nothing to do with DNC leaks. @SBSNews
In 2017, a The Wall Street Journal report said that Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) attempted to broker a deal for a pardon or clemency between the White House and Assange.
Assange is wanted in the United States on 18 counts of violating espionage laws and conspiring to hack government computers.
According to Julian Assange’s lawyers, Assange was promised a presidential pardon by a Trump associate if he was willing to lie about the Russian involvement in the DNC hack. We know that the hack originated from Russia, and Trump knew that this information would make him look bad, so he allegedly wanted Assange to lie about the source. Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins explains what’s happening.
Former congressman Dana Rohrabacher confirms he dangled a Trump pardon to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, and the reporter with whom Rohrabacher spoke shares the details. Aired on 02/20/20.
In the latest installment of “Opening Arguments”, former Acting U.S. Solicitor General, Neal Katyal discusses Trump’s “lawless” and “unprecedented” pardon of his “friends” and “campaign contributors.” Katyal argues while Trump has “gotten away with so much” the “law is going to come after him,” adding America’s “courts will bring him to justice.”
NYU Law Professor Melissa Murray shares a sobering story on “The Beat with Ari Melber” about her students “jaded and cynical” reaction to the “prospect of justice.”
Former New York City mayor and billionaire prick Michael Bloomberg barely
won his last election. In 2009, after he rammed through an exception to
the city's term limit for mayors, he ran for a third term as a
Republican and spent nearly $100 million on his reelection. While that's
sofa cushion money for Bloomberg, it was unheard of in a local race,
and he outspent his Democratic rival Bill Thompson 14 to 1. Yet, after
supposedly having had two successful terms to run on, after dropping all
that coin fluffing his own public image like an aging porn star
injecting his dick for the third time in a day on the set, all Mayor
Mike managed to get was 50.7% of the vote. Enough to win, sure, but
Thompson still got over 46%.
The point here is that a hundred million bucks bought Bloomberg a just
eked-through victory. There is certainly no guarantee that the $400
million and counting he's spending on the Democratic nomination will do
more than give him a brief novelty surge that dies down as soon as
everyone remembers "Oh, right, he's that prick."
And it's so easy to find Bloomberg being the goddamndest asshole all the time. Between the odious sustained assault on non-whites in New York City that was "Stop-and-Frisk" to his completely demeaning treatment of women
in his circle, Bloomberg has left a trail of bullshit that's visible
from miles away. Then there's the strongman tactics that he used as
mayor to break up Occupy Wall Street, which involved a violent raid on
the protesters camped out in Zuccotti Park in defiance of a court order.
I was there in the aftermath,
and I saw kids slammed to the ground by cops and listened as Wall
Street fucks laughed about the arrested getting raped at Riker's Island.
I'd bet anything they were Bloomberg voters. The thing about Bloomberg
is that, until he apologized, he seemed to get off on this shit.
It's so simple to find a fucked-up quote from Bloomberg. Here he is in
2010 after then-Gov. David Paterson signed a law that prevented police
departments from keeping the data they got from every single
stop-and-frisk suspect, including those where nothing was found.
Bloomberg scoffed,
"And what's wrong with keeping the data? We have data on everything.
You wait until we have facial recognition software, and somebody's going
to have a record of every person that walks down by your house. You
just point a camera at them, the software will do it. That's coming. I
mean, these days of, we put license plates on your car. You can read
those by computer now, and we know where you're driving." He wasn't
wrong about the technology, but his enthusiasm sure makes it seem like
he may misuse the larger data collection capabilities of, say, the NSA.
Ask the Muslim community of New York how that surveillance ended up.
I'm attacking Bloomberg in a way that, frankly, I haven't attacked the
other Democrats for the simple reason that Bloomberg isn't a Democrat.
Unlike Bernie Sanders, most of Bloomberg's views throughout his career
have never really lined up with the Democratic Party platform. He spoke
at the 2016 Democratic National Convention, but, prior to that, he
spoke at the 2004 Republican Convention, which was being held in New
York City (with protests that were met with their own overzealous response from the NYPD).
Basically, until a couple of years ago, Mike Bloomberg is what we used
to call a "moderate Republican," back when such political creatures
existed in the wilds of the GOP. The best way to define "moderate" was
someone who was conservative on financial shit but was sane on guns,
gays, and abortion and understood that climate change is real. In other
words, a Republican who believed in science and medicine. He should have
run as a Republican and used his billions to force Trump into spending
his war chest fending off a primary opponent. He might have actually
been able to drag the GOP back to having a toe on the sane side of the
line of demarcation between sanity and madness. And he would have
significantly weakened Trump.
But, alas, instead, Bloomberg, with his authoritarian impulses and his
record of racism, sexism, and violence, has decided to be the turd in
the Democratic punch bowl, plopping into the election to ruin the thing
for everyone who's been there. Already in second in national polling,
with way too many people who should know better accepting his apology
for Stop and Frisk, he has a real chance at the nomination. And way too
many people are champing at the bit for the Democrats to have their own
douchebag billionaire to face down the worse douchebag "billionaire" in
the White House. Jesus, you know how fucked a nation that makes us?
To be fair, Bloomberg's website is filled with Democratic kibble in its
section on his plans, so he's still better than Trump in the way that a
rotting cheese sandwich is better than Trump, but it's still a rotting
cheese sandwich. You'd rather toss it in the garbage than see it
inaugurated. But if that's all we got...
I could see this going another way, too. That same national
poll showed that Bernie Sanders has opened up a 12-point lead on second
place, with 31% choosing him, his biggest margin yet. Faced with the
possibility of Bloomberg, progressive Democrats and those who are just
fuckin' skeeved out by Mayor Mike might be moving towards Sanders as a
way of getting this goddamned thing over with before a just
recently-converted former Republican buys the nomination.
Let's hope that Bloomberg is chewed up and spit out at the Democratic
debate tomorrow night, making him spend his billions where he should if
he's so goddamned concerned about 2020: on the Senate races.
