As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to share pix of the fuzzy, feathered, or scaled members of your family in comments.
Daily Dose of Cute
As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to share pix of the fuzzy, feathered, or scaled members of your family in comments.
This F#@king Self-Pitying Baby, Right Here
Earlier today, Donald Trump gave the commencement address at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy, during which he actually said these actual words: "No politician in history—and I say this with great surety—has been treated worse or more unfairly."
President Trump: "No politican in history ...has been treated worse or more unfairly." pic.twitter.com/bfEVMywSkY
— BuzzFeed News (@BuzzFeedNews) May 17, 2017
The entire context of the quote:
"You have to put your head down and fight, fight, fight," he told the cadets. "Never, ever, ever give up. Things will work out just fine. Look at the way I've been treated lately – especially by the media. No politician in history – and I say this with great surety – has been treated worse or more unfairly. You can't let them get you down."Good fucking grief, this guy and his relentless victim complex!
"Adversity makes you stronger. Don't give in and don't back down and never stop doing what you know is right."
There have been four U.S. presidents who have been assassinated, one of whose brothers was also assassinated while running for president, and two more presidents who survived being shot while in office, so I can say—with great surety—that there are indeed politicians who have been "treated worse or more unfairly" than Donald Trump.
Which is to say nothing of how his opponent Hillary Clinton was (and is) treated. Including by him.
A billionaire with undiluted privilege whining about how mean everyone is to him like the rottenest of all spoiled brats is a vile, unbecoming, breathtakingly conceited thing to do.
Doing it while you're also the President of the United States is obscene.
And doing it during a commencement address is breathtakingly audacious, so lacking in even the most infinitesimal trace of self-awareness or decency that any sensible person's response is their mouth twisting into a reflexive snarl as they emit a guttural moan of seething disdain.
What a truly loathsome specimen he is.
He embarrasses himself and he embarrasses his office. He may be too firmly ensconced in the thrall of his own grandiosity to know it, but he is a risible wreck and a humiliation to this nation.
There are far worse transgressions for which he should be removed from office, but his utter failure to represent this country with a modicum of dignity is reason enough, if not legally so, that the presidency should no longer be his. And never should have been, for a fleeting moment.
I have unfathomable volumes of eruptive contempt for this guy and every filthy word he disgorges from his toxic maw. https://t.co/dIxVY15Ce0
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) May 17, 2017
I once heard someone say they're gonna run out of ways to say they hate Trump. I assure you: I will not.
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) May 17, 2017
We Resist: Day 118
One of the difficulties in resisting the Trump administration, the Republican Congressional majority, and Republican state legislatures is keeping on top of the sheer number of horrors, indignities, and normalization of the aggressively abnormal that they unleash every single day.
So here is a daily thread for all of us to share all the things that are going on, thus crowdsourcing a daily compendium of the onslaught of conservative erosion of our rights and our very democracy.
Stay engaged. Stay vigilant. Resist.
* * *
Here are some things in the news today:
Some morning updates, in case you missed 'em: The Latest on Trump.
[Content Note: Video may autoplay at link] Brian Ross, James Gordon Meek, and Randy Kreider at ABC News: Trump's Disclosure Endangered Spy Placed Inside ISIS by Israel, Officials Say. "The life of a spy placed by Israel inside ISIS is at risk [now], according to current and former U.S. officials, after [Donald] Trump reportedly disclosed classified information in a meeting with Russian officials last week. The spy provided intelligence involving an active ISIS plot to bring down a passenger jet en route to the United States, with a bomb hidden in a laptop that U.S. officials believe can get through airport screening machines undetected. The information was reliable enough that the U.S. is considering a ban on laptops on all flights from Europe to the United States. The sensitive intelligence was shared with the United States, officials say, on the condition that the source remain confidential."
Naveed Jamali at New York Daily News: The President's Breach Through the Eyes of a Former Spy Against Russia. "It was that trust and faith that they would indeed protect me that kept me working undercover as a double-agent for the FBI, and made me voluntarily put myself in danger to keep meeting with the Russians for almost four years. For the relationship between intelligence asset and case officer is sacred. In one fell swoop, I have just learned that my President betrayed that trust, perhaps for nothing more than to appeal to his vanity and ego."
Greg Sargent at the Washington Post: Here's How Trump Could Survive—Even if We Learn the Worst. (Emphases mine.)
[E]ven if we do establish clear evidence that Trump obstructed justice, it is easy to discern, based on what we are already seeing, a way that Republicans ensure that Trump survives this.As if to prove the very point, here is Speaker Paul Ryan responding to a question about whether he fears Trump's fuckery might impact Congressional Republicans' electoral prospects:
In an interview with me, Rep. Adam Schiff (Calif.) — the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee — pointed out that establishing obstruction of justice requires demonstrating corrupt intent to obstruct, a high bar to clear. But more to the point, Schiff noted that, even if this were established, Republicans would then have the option of taking refuge in the argument that this should not override the election results — rather than conceding that their party's president poses a serious enough threat to our democracy to warrant doing that.
...Remember, Trump has been assaulting our democracy on multiple fronts since the beginning, and Republicans have mostly looked the other way. There is an unfortunate tendency to cover these various stories as separate from one another, but Trump has abused his power in multiple ways that, ultimately, all trace back to the same autocratic impulse. In addition to the Russia affair, there's also the unprecedented, middle-finger-brandishing lack of transparency around his tax returns, even as he backs tax reform that would deliver his family a massive windfall; the laughably substandard ethics arrangement for his businesses and the perpetuation of likely emoluments clause violations; and the continued use of diplomatic business to promote Mar-a-Lago and steer cash into his pockets.
All of these — taken along with the alleged interference in ongoing probes — add up to a level of autocratic, above-the-law contempt for our democracy that is larger than the sum of its parts. And Republicans have effectively shrugged off most of it for as long as possible. So it's plausible that even if obstruction of justice were reasonably well established, they'd find a way to evade taking it to its logical conclusion.
“Paul Ryan on the impact of current White House crisis: “I don’t worry about things that are outside of my control.” https://t.co/8DQ5ySFS4w
— CNN (@CNN) May 17, 2017
REPORTER (off camera): Mr. Speaker, what about the political impact? Your members are on the ballot again in two years; do you worry about some of the drip, drip, drip, or some of these controversies having an impact on Republican—?Woo. That is the Speaker of the House, third in line to the U.S. presidency, saying that he doesn't believe a dangerously incompetent, reckless, possibly compromised, and seemingly lawbreaking president is a "problem" for the people of this country. And further saying that said problem is outside of his control, despite the fact that it is within his control, and also part of the job he was elected to do, to provide checks and balances on the executive branch.
RYAN: I don't worry about things that are outside of my control. I worry about things that are within our control—and that is whether or not we do what we are elected to do, which is to solve people's problems.
Absolutely extraordinary. Unsurprising, but breathtaking all the same.
Meanwhile, some conservatives think the solution is just that the White House needs a better communications team. No, really. [CN: Video may autoplay at link] Jonathan Easley at the Hill: Right Pushes Trump to Make Staff, Press Changes. "Trump's allies are pushing him to make drastic changes as the White House deals with persistent leaks and a communications strategy they believe has spun out of control. There is a broad sense among Trump's media boosters and early supporters that his staff is failing him, beginning with chief of staff Reince Priebus and extending to press secretary Sean Spicer, whose job security has been the subject of endless speculation."
You can rearrange chairs around a turd on the living room carpet, but it's still gonna be a turd on the carpet. https://t.co/W6fRxanV4L pic.twitter.com/KDF0EJGDd4
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) May 17, 2017
* * *
Ned Resnikoff at ThinkProgress: A Russian State Bank Reportedly Financed an $850 Million Deal with a Trump Business Partner. "[T]he Wall Street Journal reported that the president's business ties to Russian state institutions go deeper than previously known. The Journal said on Wednesday that the state-run bank Vnesheconombank (VEB) financed an $850 million deal with Russian-Canadian real estate developer Alexander Schnaider—who then funded the construction of a Trump-branded hotel in Toronto."
That would be the same Vnesheconombank with whose chief, Sergey N. Gorkov, Jared Kushner met in an undisclosed meeting last December.
The same Vnesheconombank which financed a takeover of one of Ukraine's struggling steel groups, right in the middle of a Ukrainian election—an election which was won by the pro-Putin candidate Viktor Yanukovych, for whom both Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort and Sanders chief strategist Tad Devine worked during that election.
Vnesheconombank, as noted in the Times piece, is also "a target of American sanctions imposed in response to Moscow's annexation of Crimea and aggression in Ukraine. It is controlled by members of President Vladimir V. Putin's government, including Prime Minister Dmitri A. Medvedev, and has been used to bail out oligarchs favored by Mr. Putin and to fund pet projects like the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi."
That would be the same "aggression in Ukraine" regarding which members of the Trump campaign pressured changes in the Republican platform, "to include language against arming Ukrainians against pro-Russian rebels."
Welp.
* * *
Matea Gold at the Washington Post: Trump's 'Huuuuuge' Caribbean Estate Is on the Market for $28 Million, Prompting Questions. "Le Chateau des Palmiers, which [Donald] Trump described as 'one of the greatest mansions in the world' when he bought it in 2013, was quietly listed for sale last month on the website of Sotheby's International Realty... The effort to sell the high-priced estate in the midst of Trump's tenure could present a similar ethical problem to the one his lawyer cited in defending his decision not to sell off his company after the election: that a buyer could overpay as a way to gain currency with the president. If the estate is sold, the public probably would learn little, if anything, about who has purchased it."
Staff and agencies at the Guardian: 'Erdoğan's Bodyguards' in Violent Clash with Protesters in Washington DC. "Nine people were hurt and two arrests were made during an altercation at the Turkish ambassador's residence in the US capital during a visit by Turkey's president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. According to witnesses, a brawl erupted when Erdoğan's security detail attacked protesters carrying the flag of the Kurdish PYD party outside the residence. A local NBC television affiliate reported Erdoğan was inside the building at the time."
Josh Rogin at the Washington Post: Trump to Unveil Plans for an 'Arab NATO' in Saudi Arabia. "When [Donald] Trump arrives in Riyadh this week, he will lay out his vision for a new regional security architecture White House officials call an 'Arab NATO,' to guide the fight against terrorism and push back against Iran. As a cornerstone of the plan, Trump will also announce one of the largest arms-sales deals in history. Behind the scenes, the Trump administration and Saudi Arabia have been conducting extensive negotiations, led by White House senior adviser Jared Kushner and Saudi Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The discussions began shortly after the presidential election, when Mohammed, known in Washington as 'MBS,' sent a delegation to meet with Kushner and other Trump officials at Trump Tower."
Trump is also reportedly scheduled to give a speech on Islam while in Saudi Arabia. What could go wrong?
[CN: Racism; carcerality] Sameer Rao at Colorlines: Criminal Justice Orgs Denounce Jeff Sessions' Mandatory Minimums Directive. "Attorney General Jeff Sessions did not explicitly mention drugs in his recent memo instructing federal prosecutors to 'pursue the most readily provable offense' in courts. It turns out that he didn't need to—various advocacy groups and activists read between the lines of the two-page document and criticized it for signaling a renewal of the War on Drugs and its criminalization of low-level drug offenses, which disproportionately harms people of color."
[CN: Nativism] Tina Vasquez at Rewire: Haitian Immigrants Rally in Protest of Possible Deportations. "This Haitian Heritage Month, Haitian immigrants and advocates are speaking out against [Donald] Trump and his administration, which will decide the fate of the 50,000 Haitian immigrants who currently reside in the United States with Temporary Protected Status (TPS). In actions across Florida this past weekend, activists asked the Trump administration to extend TPS. ...The Trump administration looking to end TPS is not a surprise, given the administration's push to ramp up detainment and deportation of undocumented people. However, on a September campaign stop, Trump said he would be one of Haitian immigrants' 'greatest champions.'"
What have you been reading that we need to resist today?
Sorry, Jimmy Fallon. We All Have to Pick Sides Now.
Of all the bullshit the New York Times has pulled lately (or ever), this ranks pretty low on the list, but it is still making me rageface all the same: Jimmy Fallon Was on Top of the World. Then Came Trump.
It's another White Man Redemption Story, starring Tonight Show host Jimmy Fallon, whose ratings sunk after he infamously tousled then-candidate Donald Trump's hair.
[A]s Mr. Fallon is well aware, viewers haven't seen him in quite the same light since an interview he conducted with Mr. Trump in September, which was widely criticized for its fawning, forgiving tone. In a gesture that has come to haunt the host, he concluded the segment by playfully running his fingers through Mr. Trump's hair.There is much, much more at the link, where Fallon is described as "boyish," "self-deprecating," and "multitalented but apolitical."
Mr. Fallon acknowledges now that the Trump interview was a setback, if not quite a mistake, and he has absorbed at least a portion of the anger that was directed at him by critics and online detractors.
"They have a right to be mad," a chastened Mr. Fallon said in an interview this month. "If I let anyone down, it hurt my feelings that they didn't like it. I got it."
..."I don't want to be bullied into not being me, and not doing what I think is funny," he said more defiantly. "Just because some people bash me on Twitter, it's not going to change my humor or my show."
...That day had been a particularly contentious one for Mr. Trump, then the Republican presidential nominee: In a Washington Post interview, he refused to say that President Obama was born in the United States, and his son Donald Jr. was being criticized for saying "they'd be warming up the gas chamber" if Republicans behaved as Democrats did.
Mr. Fallon's questions, however, were mostly innocuous; he asked Mr. Trump why children should want to grow up to be president and if his business background had helped him in the campaign. Their conversation concluded with Mr. Fallon fulfilling his longstanding wish of ruffling Mr. Trump's hair.
...Speaking in a quiet, tentative tone, Mr. Fallon seemed to be reliving the experience as he recounted it.
"I'm a people pleaser," he said. "If there's one bad thing on Twitter about me, it will make me upset. So, after this happened, I was devastated. I didn't mean anything by it. I was just trying to have fun."
That last one, the narrative that Fallon is "apolitical," runs throughout the piece. It is, indeed, central to the redemption tale. It is also a lie.
Mocking and demeaning fat people is a political act. https://t.co/wKPPi7Hmlw
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) May 17, 2017
The very fact that he did a "good old boys" hair toussle w/ a male candidate who had a female opponent is a political act.
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) May 17, 2017
Only marking as "political" jokes that are about electoral politics is a position most people who don't have undiluted privilege can't take.
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) May 17, 2017
The profile goes to great lengths to impress upon us that Fallon is a nice guy, so well-intentioned, just trying to have a little middle-of-the-road fun. He feels so bad, bullied even, when we are mean to him.
Many of Fallon's famous friends show up to explain that Fallon just isn't an edgy, political guy. He wants to provide silly humor for as wide an audience as possible.
What we are meant to understand is that Jimmy Fallon just doesn't pick sides, okay?
No. That's not okay.
It wasn't okay when Fallon ruffled Trump's hair before the election, and it sure as shit isn't okay now that Trump is president.
Trump is unlike, in countless ways, any president the United States has had before. Chiefly, he is an authoritarian with aggressive hostility for our democratic institutions. He is waging war against the intelligence community, the courts, and the media. He questions the integrity of elections, and oversees chants bellowing for the incarceration of political opponents who have committed no crime. He is a grifter who is using the office of the presidency to enrich himself and his family. He is dangerously incompetent at best, and, at worst, has committed treason. He is an inveterate bigot, a bully, and a repeat sexual assaulter.
And that isn't even a comprehensive list. In the last week alone, he has betrayed an ally to a foreign adversary and fired the FBI Director who was investigating his administration, in a naked attempt to consolidate power and subvert the justice system. That is not the act of a president, but of a dictator.
Our very republic is at risk. If you don't pick resistance, you are picking acceptance. You are picking abetting a coup.
There is no neutral anymore. Not for Jimmy Fallon, and not for any of us.
The Latest on Trump
After the bombshell report late yesterday that former FBI Director James Comey had taken contemporaneous notes on a February meeting during which Donald Trump asked him to "let this go" regarding the investigation of former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, more chaos has expectedly ensued.
White House sources reported that Trump was "cursing up a storm—ranting and raving. Yelling at staffers & using the "F" word. He's losing it tonight."
Staffers were scrambling to figure out what was even happening after learning of the Comey story only two hours before it was published: "Aides rushed to ask Trump what he had actually told Comey. But the White House had no memos or tapes of the meeting to rebut the claims, several officials said. Trump didn't even give an entire readout of his conversation, leaving staffers 'actually unaware of what happened,' one official said. 'It's not like we were in on the meeting,' this person said. 'We had no idea. We still don’t really know what was said.'"
A senior official in the administration told the Daily Beast: "I don't see how Trump isn't completely fucked."
The answer to how Trump isn't completely fucked is, of course, that the Republican Party still isn't stepping up to hold him accountable. Most GOP members of Congress have stopped overtly defending him, but they aren't checking and balancing, either. They've disappeared.
People are (understandably) making jokes about no Republicans on cable news tonight, but their rank cowardice is imperiling this country.
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) May 17, 2017
I'm not surprised, but I'll never stop being vibratingly angry at the lack of national loyalty being demonstrated by the GOP in this moment.
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) May 17, 2017
So the White House is on its own to try to defend what looks clearly like a textbook case of obstruction of justice.
Naturally, they are once again using the approach that Trump was just being Trump.
A senior WH official tells @PeterAlexander that POTUS wasn't telling Comey to end Flynn investigation and suggest this is the way he speaks
— Marianna Sotomayor (@MariannaNBCNews) May 17, 2017
Then why did he ask Pence and Sessions to leave the room? This, like everything else from the Trump White House, is manifest horseshit. https://t.co/FWtVm1OdIk
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) May 17, 2017
It also appears that Trump may be targeting his own son-in-law, Jared Kushner, as the scapegoat: "Sources tell us Kushner was a prominent voice advocating Comey's firing & the President's angry that move has created a firestorm."
Let us not forget that Kushner had his own reasons for wanting to derail investigations into Russian collusion.
Perhaps Kushner feared he was under FBI investigation. He admitted falsifying his security clearance form by omitting meetings with Russians https://t.co/DGiiMLMhmV
— Ted Lieu (@tedlieu) May 17, 2017
If Trump is indeed trying to throw Kushner under the bus, good luck with all that. When you're inextricably entangled in the same mess, you're likely to get caught under the wheels yourself.
The White House's best bet for defending Trump is to argue that he did not have corrupt intent in asking Comey to end the investigation of Flynn. But that's going to be a tough road, for reasons detailed by CREW's Richard Painter and Norm Eisen at the New York Times:
The operative word here is "corruptly." It means "an improper purpose," or one that is "evil" or "wicked." There is no precise formula for defining it; those involved in the administration of justice must continually wrestle with its interpretation.Still. The only reason Trump will be obliged to defend himself at all is if Congress takes their role seriously. And there is still precious little evidence that they intend to do so. At this point, it's pretty clear Republicans are hiding out for as long as they can, to see if they can weather the storm without having to impeach their own president.
Here, the evidence strongly suggests that the president acted corruptly. That starts with the demand for loyalty from Mr. Comey, the account of which the White House disputes. That demand can reasonably be understood to mean that Mr. Comey should protect Trump and follow his bidding, rather than honoring his oath to follow the evidence. It is also an implicit threat: Be loyal, or you will be fired.
When Mr. Comey did not seem to take the hint, Mr. Trump made his meaning crystal-clear on Feb. 14: Let the investigation go, and let Mr. Flynn go, too. The president denies this as well, of course, as he has denied so much else that has proven to be true. Who are we to believe: Mr. Comey, who would have no reason to accuse the president of obstruction of justice, and who has apparently preserved meticulous notes of his conversations? Or the president, who fact-checkers have demonstrated has told more lies in less time than any other modern occupant of the Oval Office?
...Taken together, this evidence is already more than sufficient to make out a prima facie case of obstruction of justice — and there are likely many more shoes to drop. Mr. Comey reportedly took notes on all of his encounters with the president. If what has emerged so far is any indication, this is unlikely to offer much comfort to Mr. Trump.
Unfortunately for them, the bad news continues to trickle out on a constant basis.
Last night, the AP re-upped coverage of the Trump transition team mishandling classified information: "The officials said transition officials removed classified materials from secure rooms and carried them between buildings in Washington without permission. Worried about keeping tabs on the highly sensitive material, the Obama administration officials set new limits on some classified information and explicitly barred Trump aides from viewing that material in their transition offices."
And this morning, Vladimir Putin said he would provide a transcript of Trump's Oval Office meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak—the meeting at which Trump disclosed top-level classified information.
The steady drumbeat of terrible and terrifying news about the Trump administration is clearly taking its toll on Republicans:
I just asked @DarrellIssa abt the Comey news and he flicked me off -- literally gave me the middle finger -- and kept walking. Said nothing
— Rachael Bade (@rachaelmbade) May 16, 2017
Charming.
They only have themselves to blame. This is exactly what a Trump presidency was always going to look like. And a Trump presidency was always the inevitable endgame of Republican politics. Behold your roosting chickens, fuckers.
Chelsea Manning Released from Prison
Let's start the day with some good news, shall we? Chelsea Manning has been released from prison.
In January, during his final days in office, President Obama commuted the remainder of Manning's sentence, after she served seven years of her 35-year sentence, the longest ever given in the United States to a leaker.
Her freedom from prison is not total freedom:
Obama's decision to release the soldier early leaves her with legal challenges still hanging over her. Foremost of those is the fact that her sentence from 2013 under the Espionage Act remains in full force – a fact that her lawyers regard as ominous given the current incumbent of the White House.She emerges from prison with all the potential trauma of anyone who is incarcerated, plus the additional experience of having been held in men's prisons, because she is transgender. It was not an easy seven years for Manning, and she, like anyone, will carry with those difficult lived experiences, as well as the reputation among many of her fellow countrypeople as a traitor.
As a result, even in freedom Manning will continue to press vigorously for her sentence to be overturned. Her appeal, filed almost exactly a year ago in the US army court of criminal appeals, argued that her 35-year sentence was "perhaps the most unjust sentence in the history of the military justice system."
Manning's appeal lawyer, Nancy Hollander, told the Guardian: "People keep assuming that just because someone is released their appeal is over. The rest of her case is still out there and we want to clear her name. She was convicted of crimes that I don't believe she committed and her whole prosecution was unfair."
I don't know Chelsea Manning, but I take up space in solidarity with her and in support of her. I am so glad she is no longer in prison. I fervently hope that she has the support she needs to start life anew and process the last decade.
Should our paths ever cross, she will find a friend here.
Question of the Day
It's that time again: What would you like to see asked as a future Question of the Day? Either something that's never been asked, or something that I haven't asked for awhile and you really enjoyed the first time around.
BRING ALL YOUR QUESTIONS! ALL OF THEM! :)
Trump Obstructed Justice. Period.
Another big development late this afternoon, reported by Michael S. Schmidt at the New York Times: Comey Memo Says Trump Asked Him to End Flynn Investigation. (Emphasis mine.)
[Donald] Trump asked the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, to shut down the federal investigation into Mr. Trump's former national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, in an Oval Office meeting in February, according to a memo Mr. Comey wrote shortly after the meeting.A source has confirmed the Times' reporting to NBC News.
"I hope you can let this go," the president told Mr. Comey, according to the memo.
The existence of Mr. Trump's request is the clearest evidence that the president has tried to directly influence the Justice Department and F.B.I. investigation into links between Mr. Trump's associates and Russia.
Mr. Comey wrote the memo detailing his conversation with the president immediately after the meeting, which took place the day after Mr. Flynn resigned, according to two people who read the memo. The memo was part of a paper trail Mr. Comey created documenting what he perceived as the president's improper efforts to influence a continuing investigation. An F.B.I. agent's contemporaneous notes are widely held up in court as credible evidence of conversations.
During the same meeting, Trump reportedly also "began the discussion by condemning leaks to the news media, saying that Mr. Comey should consider putting reporters in prison for publishing classified information"—because he is a gross authoritarian with contempt for our democratic norms, in addition to being a scofflaw who tried to obstruct a federal investigation.
The White House immediately issued a denial, on which Politico's Shane Goldmacher noted "no one at the White House" was willing to put their name.
They can issue denials from here to eternity, but the fact is that Comey was taking detailed notes because he already felt as though Trump were trying to influence the investigation. That means there's probably even more where this came from.
It also means that Comey's firing should now rightly be viewed (if it weren't already) as a punitive measure because Comey wouldn't indulge Trump's request to "let this go," which then itself becomes another instance of obstruction.
It was textbook obstruction of an investigation. This is the time when anyone who cares about this nation calls for impeachment proceedings.
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) May 16, 2017
NOPE
Ally Boguhn at Rewire: DNC Chair Tom Perez to Meet with Anti-Choice Democrats.
Kristen Day, executive director of anti-choice group Democrats for Life of America (DFLA), confirmed to Rewire on Tuesday that the group was planning to meet with Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chair Tom Perez, though the specifics have yet to be scheduled.What in the actual fuck.
Aides to Perez told the Atlantic in a report published Tuesday that Perez would meet with DFLA, and that the meeting came at the request of the group. It is to be "one of several conversations that Perez is having with pro-choice and pro-life Democrats," the publication said.
I don't have the goddamned energy to spend the next hour of my life detailing (again) everything that is wrong with this, so I will just have to let this tweet suffice.
Democrats, we got enough on our hands with Trump. How dare you oblige us to resist this horseshit, too.
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) May 16, 2017
[Content Note: Sexual assault] If you are a Democrat who was horrified by Trump's "grab them by the pussy" comments, then I don't know where the fuck you get off not being horrified by the idea of restrictions on access to abortion.
I have previously noted on many occasions (here, was probably the fist time) that I'm hard-pressed to see why I should be any less contemptuous of a man (or woman) who sits at a big mahogany desk in a government building making decisions about my body without my consent than I should be of the man who used physical force to make decisions about my body without my consent.
It is an observation by which anti-choice folks are outraged. They are horrified to be compared, even obliquely, to sexual predators. As well they should be. I am horrified to have to make it. But anyone who holds the position that they should be able to legislate away my bodily autonomy and supersede my consent about what happens to my body shouldn't be too goddamned surprised by the comparison.
One must be ridiculously incapable of self-reflection to simultaneously argue that sexual assault (forcing a woman to do something with her body she doesn't want to do) is a Terrible Thing, but the denial of abortion (forcing a woman to do something with her body she doesn't want to do) is a Moral Imperative.
Disallowing access to abortion, i.e. forced birth, is an inherently violent position which values fetuses more highly than the people who carry them.
I am utterly unwilling to pretend otherwise, and I wonder why the hell Tom Perez does not agree.
Ford Reportedly to Reduce Workforce by 10 Percent
Christina Rogers at the Wall Street Journal: Ford Aims to Cut Global Workforce by Roughly 10%.
Ford Motor Co. aims to cut about 10% of its global workforce amid Chief Executive Officer Mark Fields's drive to boost profits and the auto maker's sliding stock price, according to people briefed on the plan.As Ryan Felton notes at Jalopnik, "while the company didn't confirm or deny the news to the WSJ, it said 'reducing costs and becoming as lean and efficient as possible' is key to Ford's growth. But to be clear, for now, Ford said it hasn't announced any new 'people efficiency' decision, which is Ford's dystopian word choice."
The move comes as Ford targets $3 billion in cost reductions for 2017, a plan intended to improve profitability in 2018 even as U.S. auto sales plateau. Ford's share price has suffered during Mr. Fields's three-year tenure, and the company's market value has slipped far behind those of Tesla Inc. and General Motors Co.
The job cuts, expected to be outlined as early as this week, largely target salaried employees, these people said. It is unclear if the plan includes reductions in the hourly workforce at Ford's factories in the U.S. and abroad. Ford has 200,000 employees globally, half of which work in North America.
First, let me just offer my sympathies to anyone who is employed by Ford, or whose household income is partially or wholly reliant on a Ford job. To even weather the stress of the possibility of job loss is no small thing, especially when so much of the reporting on these sorts of stories talks about job numbers in the abstract, completely divorced from the lives of the people who fill those jobs.
Secondly, when we hear a CEO in a manufacturing company talk about "reducing costs and becoming as lean and efficient as possible," we know that it means one of two things (or both):
1. The "speedup," which is the ubiquitous corporate practice of not filling jobs when people leave and simply redistributing their work among remaining staff, who aren't compensated for the additional duties.
2. Automation, which continues to be the Employment Issue Whose Name Will Not Be Spoken, and for which most political leaders will not offer any meaningful solution (and often refuse to address, even when directly asked about it).
We now have a president who promised to "bring back jobs," saying it would be "so easy," but who has no plan for automation because he continues to promulgate the damnable lie that job losses in manufacturing are primarily attributable to outsourcing.
From a piece co-written by my former Shareblue colleague Anthony Reed and me:
America's manufacturing output is not in decline. To the contrary, it has grown by 17.6 percent since 2006. Efficiency has also increased: The output per worker has doubled since the 1990s.So here we are, with potentially thousands of Ford workers at risk of losing their jobs, and a president with no plan to do anything about it.
In fact, if we needed the same number of workers today to produce at the same rate as the 1990s, we would have 20.9 million workers. Instead, we have 12.1 million doing the same amount of work. Nine million workers are no longer needed due to our efficiency. Suddenly, the real reason manufacturing jobs have disappeared becomes clear.
Which brings us back to automation.
Over the next four years, robots are expected to continue to render jobs superfluous — 7 million jobs will be lost and 2 million will be gained in the latest projections. Most of those 2 million jobs will not be filled by the same people who lost the other jobs, as the skills required to create and upkeep robots differ dramatically from the skills that the robots replace.
These numbers are completely independent from outsourcing and are clearly a much more significant problem for unemployment. Taking into account the jobs we have already lost from automation, that is 16 million jobs that are no longer required, or roughly 8 times the number of jobs lost to outsourcing.
And here is where Trump's misdirection on the source of job losses becomes so deeply troubling.
Protectionism does not inoculate against automation. Trump can prevent jobs from leaving the country (at a high cost), but he cannot turn back the clock to a time where a factory sustained hundreds or thousands of employees to manufacture goods now manufactured instead by automated processes.
The choice for factories is not between outsourcing and keeping U.S. jobs. It is between outsourcing and automation.
Both are competitive business decisions, and Trump's proposals to levy fines for outsourcing will tilt factories towards automation, thus hastening the job losses due to robotics.
The facts are clear. And yet Trump persists in making promises regarding jobs that he cannot possibly keep, because most of the jobs he is vowing to restore did not go away overseas; they went away altogether.
Every time he told voters that he would "bring jobs back to America," he was telling a lie. And he told that lie because unemployment resulting from redundancy due to automation is a much more difficult problem to solve.
Automation is everywhere: Manufacturing, retail, restaurants, office administration, self-checkouts at the grocery store, self-driving vehicles on the roads. Automated garbage collection and street sweeping pilot programs are being tested across the nation. Drone deliveries are coming.
If you've visited a construction site lately, you may have seen field clearances and leveling being done by a grounded drone within marked boundaries—a sort of large-scale Roomba for the great outdoors.
We're reaching a point at which automation is accelerating so quickly, and the cost of materials for production via 3-D printing (as one example) is decelerating so quickly, that we could begin to envision utopian economic models built around a universal basic income, freeing people to use their talents to hasten technological advancements and healthcare solutions, or to create art and comfort.
Instead, we are ignoring both the devastating effects and boundless potential of automation, necessarily eliciting visions of dystopian economic models built around the continued consolidation of wealth among a very few who ruthlessly exploit everyone else, as we scrabble for scraps.
That doesn't have to be our future. But it will be, so long as we are led by people who can't—or won't—envision anything else.
More on Trump's Disloyal Disclosure
Background, and follow-up.
Matt Shuham at Talking Points Memo: Reports: Highly Classified Info Trump Shared with Russia Came from Israel.
The highly classified information [Donald] Trump shared with top Russian diplomats last week was provided to the United States by Israel, the New York Times reported Tuesday.In case your brainpan isn't a card catalog of Trump fuckabilia, let me remind you that U.S. spies warned Israel before Trump's inauguration not to share intel with the Trump administration in fear of precisely this outcome.
The Times cited two unnamed U.S. officials, one current and one former, who it described as "familiar with how the United States obtained the information."
NBC News, citing three unnamed government officials, later confirmed that Israel was the source of the intelligence.
US spies warned their Israeli counterparts that Russia may have "levers of pressure" over Donald Trump and told them to be careful about sharing intelligence with the White House in case it was passed on to the Kremlin, according to Israeli media reports.And the anticipated fallout begins: At the AP, Jan M. Olsen reports that a senior European intelligence official has told the Associated Press "his country might stop sharing information with the United States if it confirms [Donald] Trump shared classified details with Russian officials. The official said Tuesday that doing so 'could be a risk for our sources.'"
The American intelligence officials reportedly told the Israelis not to share sensitive information with Mr Trump's aides until the incoming president's relationship with Russia had been fully investigated.
Let me underline this point once more:
Trump's recklessness will isolate us from the global intelligence community, plunging our intelligence community into darkness.
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) May 16, 2017
We are in dangerous times. And the only solution is to remove Donald Trump from office, as swiftly as possible.
Daily Dose of Cute
As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to share pix of the fuzzy, feathered, or scaled members of your family in comments.
We Resist: Day 117
One of the difficulties in resisting the Trump administration, the Republican Congressional majority, and Republican state legislatures is keeping on top of the sheer number of horrors, indignities, and normalization of the aggressively abnormal that they unleash every single day.
So here is a daily thread for all of us to share all the things that are going on, thus crowdsourcing a daily compendium of the onslaught of conservative erosion of our rights and our very democracy.
Stay engaged. Stay vigilant. Resist.
* * *
Here are some things in the news today:
I covered Donald Trump's reckless disclosure of top-level classified information this morning: Trump Shares Top-Level Classified Intel with Russians.
Lachlan Markay, Tim Mak, Asawin Suebsaeng, and Jana Winter at the Daily Beast: White House Staff 'Hiding' as Russia Chaos Engulfs West Wing.
Communications staff and senior staffers at the White House were literally "hiding in offices," according to a senior Trump aide, as a gaggle of White House press stormed White House hallways just after the Washington Post story broke on Monday evening.There's much more where that came from. Three things:
"Do not ask me about how this looks, we all know how this looks," the senior aide told The Daily Beast on Monday evening. Trump administration officials spoke to The Daily Beast on the condition of anonymity so as to speak freely. The aide described a scene at the White House as tense and "a morgue," where senior officials such as Sean Spicer, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, and Stephen Bannon convened to sketch an immediate path forward in handling the aftermath.
According to multiple reporters present, National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster was walking by at the time when he saw the crowd of journalists gathered outside Spicer's office. "This is the last place in the world I want to be," McMaster said, before ducking away for an hour til he headed to brief the press.
...Some administration officials who supported Trump during the campaign said they were appalled at his apparent divulging of U.S. secrets, and considered it a break from his "America First" campaign mantra.
"With news like this I'm beginning to wonder why Trump ran in the first place and if he really cares about the country," said a senior Trump appointee involved in counter-ISIS policymaking. "I miss candidate Trump. Now he's just a pathetic mess."
"I doubt he did it to collude [with the Russians]. I think he's dumb and doesn't know the difference," a former FBI official told The Daily Beast. "He thinks he's arranging some business deal except that he's not."
"I don't think he shared the classified intelligence to collude. I think he shared because he thinks he's playing chess when he's actually playing checkers. International affairs is not like buying a golf course," added a second former FBI official.
When asked if the Russians could use the information Trump provided in way that harms the U.S., this official said, "of course."
1. A person has to be deeply dishonest or deeply stupid, or both, to pretend that Trump was ever anything else but this. It was always manifestly evident that this would be the outcome of a Trump presidency.
2. These folks will express their horror privately and/or anonymously, but none of them are brave enough to state publicly and under their own names their grave concerns about the president whose dangerous behavior they witness up close and personally every day.
3. The fact is that whether Trump is disclosing information to the Russians because he is an egotistical dipshit or because he is actively colluding with them to undermine this nation is irrelevant. And the fact that his loyalists keep trying to insist that it matters is revolting. His intent does not affect the outcome.
Because Trump's behavior is getting more difficult to defend, we're now getting outrageous defenses like this garbage:
"the U.S. intelligence community has suffered greater breaches, and its relationships have survived." https://t.co/kgvuJZXez1
— Ramesh Ponnuru (@RameshPonnuru) May 16, 2017
New GOP defense: The Rosenbergs did far worse, alright? https://t.co/NdeIyZpdLt
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) May 16, 2017
I'm not sure by what measure the Rosenbergs' security breaches were definitely "greater" than Trump's, since we don't even yet know the extent of the consequences of Trump's reckless disclosure. And, sure, the U.S. intelligence community's relationships may have survived, but the Rosenbergs didn't. They were executed for their crimes. So, curious example to defend Trump's breach. To say the least.
And although some Republicans are beginning to make modest noises about Trump's latest gross misdeed, the idea that GOP lawmakers are peeling away from Trump is still a myth: "Just six Republicans, including one Senator, have come out in support of a special Congressional committee or independent investigation. Both of these options would still ultimately rely on the Justice Department to enforce the law. More Republicans (41) have 'questions or concerns' about the firing of Comey by Trump. But such concern has so far not translated into support for any kind of action."
Why? Because they are not patriots, and their only real concern is the possibility that Trump's fuckery will endanger their radical rightwing agenda. That is not an assumption. As Josh Marshall noted, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell made it absolutely plain:
Here is the quote [from McConnell].McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate, reductively refers to Trump's imperiling the nation as "drama from the White House," his primary concern about which is that it distracts from the Republican agenda.
I read the Washington Post story and I read General McMasters response, which tends to refute the story, rebut the story. I think we could do with a little less drama from the White House on a lot of things so that we can focus on our agenda, which is deregulations, tax reform, repealing and replacing Obamacare.The cynicism is almost lapidary in its purity. 'Yeah, sharing that classified intelligence was pretty bad. But let's focus on the big picture which is tax reform.' Or, 'You sharing classified intelligence with Russia is only making Obamacare repeal that much harder.'
People have been saying for months that establishment Republicans had decided that they'd let Trump do almost literally anything as long as he agreed to sign a big tax cut and help repeal Obamacare. And now McConnell, faced with the ultimate consequence of this moral desertion, is happy to say it out loud.
There it is. There will be no checking and balancing.
One might imagine that even the most partisan, ideological, craven scum of the GOP would get the memo that continuing to attach themselves to Trump is a bad idea when 10 percent of Trump voters now say they'd rather have Hillary Clinton as president. (That's triple the 3 percent who merely regretted their vote in March, which I noted then was a staggering number of people.) But they don't care that Trump is endangering the nation. They only care whether his endangering the nation is a big enough public relations problem to hinder passage of their hideous policies.
It's all a big game, and the winner is who has the most effective messaging. To that end, National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster trotted his ass out for the media again today, and made the most incredulous claim:
On the one hand, McMaster plays down what Trump shared as "open source reporting." On the other, says leaking the story was dangerous.
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) May 16, 2017
The White House can't have it both ways. If what Trump said was NBD, then it was also NBD to report on it.
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) May 16, 2017
This doesn't pass even the most cursory scrutiny. But truth and logic don't matter to this White House or to the Republican Party. All that matters is enough spin to move forward. Damage control for traitorous behavior on the part of the president to protect a heinous legislative agenda. Breathtaking.
In other news:
Tom Winter and Kenzi Abou-Sabe at NBC News: Manafort Got $3.5M Mystery Mortgage, Paid No Tax. "Former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort took out a $3.5 million mortgage through a shell company just after leaving the campaign, but the mortgage document that explains how he would pay it back was never filed—and Manafort's company never paid $36,000 in taxes that would be due on the loan. In addition, despite telling NBC News previously that all his real estate transactions are transparent and include his name and signature, Manafort's name and signature do not appear on any of the loan documents that are publicly available. A Manafort spokesperson said the $3.5 million loan was repaid in December, but also said paperwork showing the repayment was not filed until he was asked about the loan by NBC News."
Alex Campbell at BuzzFeed: The Family of a Murdered DNC Staffer Has Rejected a Report Linking His Death to WikiLeaks. "A report on Monday evening claimed to find links between slain DNC staffer Seth Rich and WikiLeaks. But Rich's family told BuzzFeed News, '[W]e see no facts, we have seen no evidence, we have been approached with no emails.'" This is a good reminder that the Russian disinformation campaign in the U.S. continues unabated. This story has Russian meddling all the fuck over it.
[Content Note: Video may autoplay at link] Youkyung Lee at the AP: Experts See Possible North Korea Links to Global Cyberattack. "Cybersecurity experts are pointing to circumstantial evidence that North Korea may be behind the global 'ransomware' attack: the way the hackers took hostage computers and servers across the world was similar to previous cyberattacks attributed to North Korea. Simon Choi, a director at South Korean anti-virus software company Hauri Inc. who has analyzed North Korean malware since 2008 and advises the government, said Tuesday that the North is no newcomer to the world of bitcoins. It has been mining the digital currency using malicious computer programs since as early as 2013, he said."
[CN: Video may autoplay at link] Meanwhile... James Griffiths, Matthew Chance, and Steve George at CNN: Putin Warns Against 'Intimidating' North Korea After Latest Missile Launch. "Russian President Vladimir Putin has condemned North Korea's latest missile launch as 'dangerous' but warned against 'intimidating' Pyongyang. Speaking in China, Putin called for a peaceful solution to the ongoing tensions on the Korean peninsula, Russia's Sputnik news agency reported."
Everything is fine. Just Trump's former campaign manager possibly laundering money for Russia; Russia spreading disinformation via the internet in the U.S.; North Korea stepping up its cyberattack and nuclear games; and Russia's president warning to take it easy on North Korea.
* * *
With everything else going on, it's easy to forget that Trump's administration is being fucking horrendous in every other way, too.
[CN: War on agency] Ariana Eunjung Cha and Carol Morello at the Washington Post: Trump Expansion of Abortion 'Gag Rule' Will Restrict $8.8 Billion in U.S. Aid. "Trump's executive order to block U.S. aid to groups abroad that counsel or provide referrals about abortion went into effect Monday and will restrict nearly $9 billion in foreign health assistance. The rule, which has reproductive-rights advocates reeling, is significantly broader than similar bans in place intermittently since 1984. Those past actions were limited to about $600 million in family planning funding. Senior administration officials confirmed Monday that Trump's version will impact $8.8 billion for programs, including those related to AIDS, malaria, and child health."
[CN: Racism; nativism] Sameer Rao at Colorlines: Five Reasons Why Kris Kobach Shouldn't Lead Trump's Voter Fraud Investigations. "Donald Trump never proved his unfounded allegations that millions of undocumented immigrants illegally cost him the popular vote. But on Thursday (May 11), he issued an executive order that established the Presidential Advisory Committee on Electoral Integrity. Officially tasked with investigating 'those vulnerabilities in voting systems and practices used for federal elections' that may lead to voter fraud, the Trump-appointed commission's leadership includes Kansas secretary of state Kris Kobach as vice chair."
Alex Kotch at Rewire: Betsy DeVos' Choice of New Hires Suggests She'll Keep Her School Privatization Promises. "Betsy DeVos, the conservative plutocrat and controversial cabinet nominee who barely squeaked through her confirmation vote for secretary of education, announced a spate of new hires on April 12. And, in keeping with DeVos' history, there's a theme. Out of the eight new hires, at least four have a demonstrated record of advocating for charter schools or private school vouchers—taking money from the public education budget and giving it to kids for tuition at private, often religious, schools. DeVos' selection of these individuals, along with existing staff at the U.S. Department of Education (DOE), confirms what many suspected: that DeVos will push hard for school privatization from the beginning of her term as education secretary."
Esther Yu Hsi Lee at ThinkProgress: Trump Administration Rejects Ban on Harmful Insecticide, Dozens of Farmworkers Get Sick. "On May 5, workers harvesting cabbage on a farm near Bakersfield were exposed to a 'pesticide odor' from mandarin orchards in the west sprayed with Vulcan, an organophosphate-based chemical. The active ingredient in Vulcan is chlorpyrifos, a chemical linked to human health problems manufactured by Dow AgroSciences, a division of Dow Chemical. Chlorpyrifos was slated to be banned by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency under the Obama administration. ...Despite the scientific evidence, new EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt rejected the ban on chlorpyrifos on the grounds that the agency needs to 'provide regulatory certainty' for the thousands of U.S. farms that rely on chlorpyrifos."
Finally, a couple of pieces of good news:
Lucy Westcott at Towleroad: Same-Sex Marriage Support at Highest-Ever Level. "The American public's support for same-sex marriage is at a record high, according to a new Gallup poll. Sixty-four percent of U.S. adults now say that same-sex marriages should be recognized as valid under the law. That's a three percent increase on last year—when 61 percent of adults said they support same-sex marriage—and the highest level of support since Gallup started keeping track in 1996."
Carolina A. Miranda at the L.A. Times: Meet Robin Bell, the Artist Who Projected Protest Messages onto Trump's D.C. Hotel Last Night. "For a short period on Monday night, a large projection appeared on the facade of the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., that read 'Emoluments Welcome'... This was followed by a message that read 'Pay Trump Bribes Here,' with an arrow that pointed to the front door of the hotel. ...The projections were all part of an act of protest by artist, filmmaker, and video editor Robin Bell, who has been creating these types of guerrilla light protests for more than half a dozen years."
What have you been reading that we need to resist today?
Yates: Flynn Was in a "Serious Compromise Situation"
Tonight, CNN will air an Anderson Cooper interview of former acting Attorney General Sally Yates, who was fired by Donald Trump for refusing to defend his Muslim ban, and who was also investigating Michael Flynn's ties to Russia. Ahead of the broadcast, duing which Yates states that Flynn "was in a "serious compromise situation; that the Russians had real leverage" on him, CNN has released three clips from the interview as teasers.
In the following clip, Yates, in her straightforward and understated way, makes abundantly clear how deeply unconcerned the White House was with being urgently alerted that Flynn was compromised by the Russians.
This is beyond "incompetence." Even the most unprepared, overwhelmed, out-of-their-depth, know-nothing dipshit would be able to interpret the dire warnings issued by the Justice Department about Flynn, and act accordingly, given a modicum of patriotism.
This is indifference.
Former acting Attorney General Sally Yates tells @AC360 that the Russians had "real leverage" over Michael Flynn https://t.co/oQtwNi4BFO pic.twitter.com/SE4OfAoMBU
— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) May 16, 2017
COOPER: The underlying conduct itself was potentially a fireable offense.There are a number of possible explanations for why the Trump White House was so indifferent to warnings that the National Security Advisor had been and/or could be compromised by Russia. Some are worse than others. None of them are acceptable.
YATES: You know, I can't speak to a fireable offense; it was up to the president to make that decision about what he was gonna do. But we certainly felt like they needed to act.
COOPER: Don McGahn actually asked you at that first meeting whether or not you thought the National Security Advisor should be fired.
YATES: Mm-hmm.
COOPER: What did you say?
YATES: I told him it wasn't our call.
COOPER: Was the underlying conduct illegal? Was illegality involved?
YATES: There's certainly a criminal statute that was implicated by his conduct.
[edit]
COOPER: You warned the White House to act.
YATES: Absolutely, yes.
COOPER: To do something?
YATES: We expected the White House to act.
COOPER: Did you expect them to act quickly?
YATES: Yes.
COOPER: There was urgency to the information?
YATES: Yes.
[edit]
COOPER: I'm just wondering, just on a personal level, and I don't know if you can answer this or not, but, you know, you're in government one week, you get fired, and now you're out, and you're watching day after day after day go by, and nothing seems to have happened to the National Security Advisor that you have informed the White House about. Just as a private citizen at that point, did it concern you?
YATES: Well, sure. I was concerned about it, but I didn't know if perhaps something else had been done, that maybe I just wasn't aware of...
COOPER: Maybe that they were keeping him away from certain classified information while they were investigating, something like that?
YATES: Maybe? I just didn't have any way of knowing what was going on at that point.
COOPER: Were you aware that he sat in on a, even from media reports, that he sat in on a phone call with Russia's president?
YATES: Just from media reports.
COOPER: Between the president and Russia's president. [Yates nods] Did you find that surprising?
YATES: Well, sure. Absolutely that was surprising.
Hillary Clinton Officially Launches Onward Together
Ten days ago, I wrote about Hillary Clinton's plan to launch a new political group called Onward Together. Last night, Clinton officially announced the launch on Twitter.
We're launching Onward Together to encourage people to get involved, organize, and even run for office. https://t.co/8exooosvZ5
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) May 15, 2017
More than ever, I believe citizen engagement is vital to our democracy. I'm so inspired by everyone stepping up to organize and lead.
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) May 15, 2017
.@IndivisibleTeam @swingleft .@ColorOfChange is organizing for criminal justice reform, voter freedom, fairness and accuracy in media, and other racial justice issues.
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) May 15, 2017
.@IndivisibleTeam @swingleft @ColorOfChange @EmergeAmerica @runforsomething Those are just a few of the groups Onward Together will support, working with @GovHowardDean and others—stay tuned for more to come.
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) May 15, 2017
.@IndivisibleTeam @swingleft @ColorOfChange @EmergeAmerica @runforsomething @GovHowardDean This year hasn't been what I envisioned, but I know what I'm still fighting for: a kinder, big-hearted, inclusive America. Onward!
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) May 15, 2017
As I said before, Hillary Clinton doesn't owe us a goddamn thing, but she loves her country. So here she is, showing up again.
There are an awful lot of people who bitterly complain that Clinton "won't go away." Indeed she won't. Another way of saying that is Hillary Clinton keeps showing up.
For her country. For us.
This is what a patriot looks like.
Trump Shares Top-Level Classified Intel with Russians
A brief timeline of recent events: Last Tuesday, Donald Trump fired FBI Director James Comey, as the investigation into Russian interference and possible collusion intensified. The stated reason was that Comey had mishandled the investigation into Hillary Clinton's emails, a conclusion drawn by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. As per usual, Trump immediately contradicted the White House spin, telling NBC News' Lester Holt in an interview that he'd been planning to fire Comey anyway, and revealing that he'd (unethically and possibly illegally) asked Comey on multiple occasions whether he was under investigation for collusion with Russia.
The next day, Trump met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak in the Oval Office, where U.S. media were denied access, but the Russian Foreign Ministry photographers were allowed to take photos, despite the potential access to classifed information. By way of reminder, Kislyak is the figure with whom Michael Flynn, Jeff Sessions, and Jared Kushner had undisclosed meetings during the campaign.
Last night, Greg Miller and Greg Jaffe at the Washington Post reported a bombshell about that meeting: Trump Revealed Highly Classified Information to Russian Foreign Minister and Ambassador.
[Donald] Trump revealed highly classified information to the Russian foreign minister and ambassador in a White House meeting last week, according to current and former U.S. officials, who said Trump's disclosures jeopardized a critical source of intelligence on the Islamic State.Since publication, multiple other news outlets have confirmed the WaPo's report, with a source telling BuzzFeed "that 'it's far worse than what has already been reported.' The official was referring to the extent of the classified intelligence information Trump disclosed to the Russian ambassador and foreign minister."
The information the president relayed had been provided by a U.S. partner through an intelligence-sharing arrangement considered so sensitive that details have been withheld from allies and tightly restricted even within the U.S. government, officials said.
The partner had not given the United States permission to share the material with Russia, and officials said Trump's decision to do so endangers cooperation from an ally that has access to the inner workings of the Islamic State. After Trump's meeting, senior White House officials took steps to contain the damage, placing calls to the CIA and the National Security Agency.
"This is code-word information," said a U.S. official familiar with the matter, using terminology that refers to one of the highest classification levels used by American spy agencies. Trump "revealed more information to the Russian ambassador than we have shared with our own allies."
..."It is all kind of shocking," said a former senior U.S. official who is close to current administration officials. "Trump seems to be very reckless and doesn't grasp the gravity of the things he's dealing with, especially when it comes to intelligence and national security. And it's all clouded because of this problem he has with Russia."
In his meeting with Lavrov, Trump seemed to be boasting about his inside knowledge of the looming threat. "I get great intel. I have people brief me on great intel every day," the president said, according to an official with knowledge of the exchange.
Trump went on to discuss aspects of the threat that the United States learned only through the espionage capabilities of a key partner. He did not reveal the specific intelligence-gathering method, but he described how the Islamic State was pursuing elements of a specific plot and how much harm such an attack could cause under varying circumstances. Most alarmingly, officials said, Trump revealed the city in the Islamic State's territory where the U.S. intelligence partner detected the threat.
National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster was sent out to refute the report with a carefully and mendaciously worded statement that misrepresented what the WaPo had reported, which was not that Trump had shared intelligence sources, intelligence methods, or military operations:
Watch McMaster's statement carefully: “at no time were sources or methods discussed.” WaPo report never said Trump revealed sources/methods. pic.twitter.com/SF3rWDqKFi
— Bradd Jaffy (@BraddJaffy) May 15, 2017
There's nothing that the president takes more seriously than the security of the American people. The story that came out tonight, as reported, is false. The president and the foreign minister reviewed a range of common threats to our two countries, including threats to civil aviation. At no time, at no time, were intelligence sources or methods discussed, and the president did not disclose any military operations that were not already publicly known. Two other senior officials were present, including the Secretary of State, remember the meeting the same way and have said so. Their on-the-record account should outweigh those of anonymous sources. I was in the room; it didn't happen. Thanks, everybody. [walks away without taking any questions]By mischaracterizing what had been reported, McMaster was staking his own credibility on refuting something that no one had even accused Trump of doing. And naturally, the foolishness of letting his reputation rely on Trump's integrity immediately became evident (though it should have been already), as Trump's morning tweetshitz included an admission that he had indeed disclosed information to the Russians and had every right to do so.
As President I wanted to share with Russia (at an openly scheduled W.H. meeting) which I have the absolute right to do, facts pertaining....
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 16, 2017
...to terrorism and airline flight safety. Humanitarian reasons, plus I want Russia to greatly step up their fight against ISIS & terrorism.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 16, 2017
Which, of course, led to another round of denials from the White House:
WH/NSC spokesman Mike Anton emphatically denies that Pres Trump's tweets today confirm disclosure of classified material to Russia.
— Mark Knoller (@markknoller) May 16, 2017
No reasonable person believes such a patently absurd bit of spin, but, at this point, the White House is just issuing this dreck for the benefit of their base. It's grist for the "fake media" mill: They need to provide something to the people they've primed to be distrustful of all political media and all reports of Trump's various wrongdoings.
Meanwhile, Trump continues his pattern of brazenly admitting what his staff tries to conceal, because he believes the office of the presidency entitles him to behave however he wants. And it's probably a good time to recall that Trump once bragged: "I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose any voters." That statement is the clearest evidence of his state of mind as any we will ever have.
Because of the fundamental tension created by Trump's ego and his staff's insistence on trying to spin his behavior, we now exist in a space in which neither the president nor any member of his administration can be trusted. Which is a problem in any situation, but particular one in which the president is spilling secrets of our allies to hostile foreign governments.
Trump's recklessness will isolate us from the global intelligence community, plunging our intelligence community into darkness.
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) May 16, 2017
Trump must be removed from office, for the safety of this nation. Surely even the "give him a chance" brigade sees that now.
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) May 16, 2017
House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi has called for Congress to be given a full briefing "on the extent of the damage [Donald] Trump has done." Indeed. But her Republican colleagues remain intractably averse to showing even the merest hint of loyalty to this nation.
The seams in their blanket defense may be starting to fray. Senator Bob Corker, the partiest of party men, said last night: "The White House has got to do something soon to bring itself under control and in order. It's got to happen." And added: "Obviously they're in a downward spiral right now and they've got to figure out a way to come to grips with all that's happening."
That is still a woefully insufficient statement, given what's happening. But it's a pointed comment on the grievous nature of Trump's disclosure to our adversaries that it's become nearly indefensible even to the members of his party who have, thus far, gone to unfathomable lengths to defend him.
Aaaaand I'm Back!
Thanks to you all for your understanding about the brief delay in my return!
Iain and I took a little holiday for my birthday, and our return flight was canceled, so we ended up having a 24-hour delay until we could get on another flight, and then that flight was delayed on the runway, and I'm not sure when the hell we ever would have taken off, had a lovely air traffic controller not been on our flight (and the third in Iain's and my row), who made a few calls to get us off the ground. (LOL whut? I know!)
ANYWAY. I'm back now, and we had a lovely time (minus the slight glitch, although of course we made the best of it).
My profound thanks to the other mods, and to Aphra for her terrific posts, while I was away. I am very lucky indeed to have such good friends and colleagues, and to have such a terrific husband, who is the best company, a most excellent traveling companion, and forever my favorite person on the planet. ♥
Blog Note
Due to some unforseen circumstances, I'm going to be away longer than anticipated. I hope to be back to regular blogging by tomorrow. My apologies for the inconvenience.
