Friday Talking Points (483) -- That's Your Stink, Mr. President, That's Your Swamp

[ChrisWeigant]

Before we get to the fresh lies emanating from the Oval Office this week, we have to begin with a look back. Because not only has President Donald Trump now hit the milestone of lying over 3,000 times while in office, but apparently it's getting too much for even Fox News personalities to take.

Over the past 15 months, we've occasionally seen lists compiled of Trump's biggest whoppers, but these are usually posted as comments to other articles by fervent opponents of the president. That's where we've run into them most, at any rate. Which makes the following list all the more extraordinary, because not only is pretty comprehensive, it was broadcast by none other than Neil Cavuto, on his Fox News show. In other words, Donald Trump might just have had to sit through it. When even the Foxlandia cheerleaders are pointing out the mountain of lies Trump's been telling, you know we've reached some sort of tipping point (thanks, Rudy!).

We did a cursory search for a transcript of the Cavuto diatribe, but could not find one. So instead we present this summary list, compiled by Salon. Cavuto opened his show by first addressing the bombshell news that Rudy Giuliani revealed this week, that Donald Trump did indeed reimburse his fixer Michael Cohen for that $130,000 hush money payment made to porn star Stormy Daniels. Then Cavuto really gained steam, and began to list all the lies Trump has so far told -- all of which are easily disprovable. Here's the list, from the article:

• Trump insisting that the Russian government hadn't interfered in the 2016 presidential election, even though many of Trump's fellow Republicans had to insist that they had.


• Trump denying that he had claimed Russia hadn't interfered in the election, when he had.


• Trump describing his tax cut as the biggest ever in American history, when in fact it wasn't.


• Trump claiming that the tax cut would cost him a fortune, when in fact it will make him richer than before.


• Trump saying his approval ratings aren't as bad as those of other presidents at this point in their administration, even though they're lower than those of his four immediate predecessors (George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama).


• Trump telling the public that former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson wasn't on his way out, when in fact he was.


• Trump saying that former Chief of Staff Reince Priebus wasn't going to leave the administration, when in fact he was.


• Trump supporting his former Director of the National Economic Council Gary Cohn, even though he was on his way out.


• Trump declaring support for his former chief strategist, Steve Bannon, even though he was also on his way out.


• In reference to Trump's attorney general: "Swore by Jeff Sessions until you started swearing at Jeff Sessions."


• Trump making it seem like his legal team was "locked in place" until lawyers John Dowd and Ty Cobb departed.


• Trump denying that he had been thinking of firing special counsel Robert Mueller, even though he now says he's thinking of getting involved at the Justice Department.

Cavuto then apparently inserted some nice words for the president's overall agenda, but soon returned to listing some more of his many bald-faced lies:

"It is not that these exaggerations and omissions and misstatements are now and then. More like now and then something else. Always something else," Cavuto opined, before continuing with another list of Trump misstatements that included claiming he had signed more bills into law at this point in his presidency than any of his predecessors (he hadn't) and mischaracterizing the state of the national debt during his time in office.

Cavuto also pointed to erroneous statements that the president needed to correct but had not, such as arguing that there had been voter fraud in Virginia and New Hampshire, that millions of undocumented immigrants had voted in the 2016 presidential election or that he had won one of the biggest electoral college landslides in modern history (none of which are true). "You are right to say some of them {the press} are out to get you. But oftentimes they're using your own words to bash you. You probably might not care. But you should. I guess you've been too busy draining the swamp to stop and smell the stink you're creating. That's your doing. That's your stink. Mr. President, that's your swamp," Cavuto concluded.

Remember, this is from a Fox News personality, not from some raving lefty or anything. To state the painfully obvious: when the stink is so powerful that your own biggest fans are starting to notice, then you may be in serious trouble.

It's been that kind of week, in Washington. Another whirlwind that spins so violently quickly that all memory of what came before it is obliterated. Need proof? The White House Correspondents Association Dinner happened less than a week ago. But now it seems like it's been months since that particular tempest in a teapot happened. In fact, early in the week, we spotted what we thought was going to be a good candidate to open this Friday review. It's one of the snarkiest sentences we've read in a long time, so it seemed like a real winner, at the time. The New York Times did a puff piece about "Washington's Trump-Era 'It Couple'," Matt and Mercedes Schlapp. These ultra-conservatives attended the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner, and then did some pearl-clutching afterwards, because the comedienne made some jokes they didn't like. Which led to the following snark (emphasis added, just because): "'It's why America hates the out of touch leftist media elite,' Ms. Schlapp tweeted from a limousine en route to an exclusive after-party organized by NBC/MSNBC." Oh, those dastardly elites! But, amusing as this sentence was, it now has to be seen as ancient news. Because the rest of the week happened.

Rudy Giuliani had his debut this week as Trump's right-hand-man legal attack dog. To say it didn't go well is an understatement. Now, Rudy and Trump are really two peas in a pod. They both love media attention (be it tabloid or otherwise, it doesn't matter to them), and they both love to make outrageous statements to annoy lefties. They pride themselves on their brash, no-holds-barred New York style, and think it serves them well in just about any circumstance. So it really wasn't a surprise to see Giuliani doing his schtick on television, as Trump's newest legal spokesperson. It was probably the biggest reason Trump hired him -- because he is supposedly so good at defending Trump on screen. Trump realized he was in a hole and instead of taking the advice of his legal team to "stop digging," Trump went out and hired the biggest, beefiest steam shovel he could find, in order to dig even faster. Because that'll surely solve the problem!

From all reports, it seems that Trump and Rudy had a meeting that nobody else knew about, and they decided to get out in front of certain aspects of Trump's increasingly-dire legal situation. Michael Cohen's records were raided by the F.B.I., so sooner or later it was going to come out that Trump did indeed foot the bill for the hush money payoff to Stormy Daniels. So Rudy casually dropped the bombshell in an interview with Sean Hannity. As well as a few peripheral bombshells, such as the real reason Trump fired James Comey and that North Korea was about to release three American prisoners.

Legal experts recoiled in horror. Giuliani, rather than protecting his client, had now laid Trump open to all sorts of legal pitfalls. The most amusing of these is ironic because of how annoyed Trump got over the F.B.I. not respecting attorney-client privilege in the Cohen raid. Attorney-client privilege is a fragile thing -- it disappears in certain circumstances. The first is if the attorney and the client are in any way conspiring to break the law. The second is if there is a third person in the room -- attorney-client privilege has to be between the attorney and the client and nobody else. Which brings up the third -- the one that Rudy Giuliani just stepped in. If either the attorney or the client talks about the discussion that was held with any other person then they have waived the privilege entirely. So if Trump and Giuliani just met to plot out his legal strategy, it would be covered. Right up to the point where Giuliani goes on television and talks about what was discussed in the meeting.

But, please remember, Trump only hires the best people. Nothing but the best for him! At this point, people in Washington are laying bets on how long Rudy will be around. You can almost hear someone chanting in the background: "One Scaramucci, two Scaramuccis, three Scaramuccis...." Heh. Trump also provided a bit of comedy himself this week, in trying to untangle the knot that Giuliani had tied him up in, admitting that: "virtually everything said has been said incorrectly." Well, yeah, but that could describe his entire term in office, really.

Of course, the chaos didn't end with just Rudy, this week. There was plenty of other chaos going on in the White House simultaneously. Former Trump doctor Harold Bornstein dropped his own bombshell on Trump this week, when he revealed that Trump thugs had shown up in his office last February, right after Trump became president. They demanded the original copies of all of Trump's medical records, as well as a photo of Trump and the doctor on the wall.

This was completely illegal. There is a federal medical records law known as HIPAA which spells out exactly how medical records are handled when a patient changes doctors. But there was no signed form from Trump, and even if there had been, what normally happens is that copies are made of the records, not that they are seized in a raid, which left Bornstein feeling like he had been "raped." Of course, Bornstein has his own problems with medical privacy laws, because what triggered the raid was him telling the New York Times that Trump uses the hair restoring drug Propecia. He still doesn't see anything wrong with telling a newspaper this ("And it certainly was not a breach of medical trust to tell somebody they take Propecia to grow their hair. What's the matter with that?" ), which means he doesn't even have a fundamental understanding of patient-doctor confidentiality. Also revealed this week was the fact that that letter from Bornstein during the campaign that praised Trump's health to the heavens was actually dictated by Trump.

The Washington Post helpfully pointed out the gigantic double standard the media uses for Trump, stating "If Hillary Clinton had done that, we would be been apoplectic, and rightfully so." But when Trump does it? Eh, it's just Trump being Trump. The article goes further:

Yet at the very same time, the press not only treated Clinton's health as a matter of utmost seriousness; it also was quick to accuse her of being overly secretive and dishonest about it.

You may remember that in September 2016, Clinton had a bout of pneumonia. At a Sept. 11 memorial event on a hot day, she got lightheaded as she was headed toward her car, stumbling and being caught by aides. The reaction from the press was to treat it as an absolutely momentous event that not only raised profound questions about her fitness to be president but also showed how sneaky and deceitful she was for not announcing the illness to the press the moment it was diagnosed.

"Hillary Clinton Is Set Back by Decision to Keep Illness Secret" said the front-page headline in the New York Times the next day. On that day, the cable TV networks ran a total of 13.5 hours of coverage of Clinton's health. Fox News went into paroxysms of speculation about the varieties of brain ailments Clinton might be suffering from. Politico published a photo gallery entitled "Hydrated Hillary: 9 times Clinton quenched her thirst," just to show her bizarre water-drinking behavior that surely must have been concealing something.

But now? It's not even the biggest scandal of the week for Trump.

OK, this is way too long already, so let's just whip through what else was going on this rather exhausting week.

John Kelly may be on his way out of the White House, after a report that he's called Donald Trump "an idiot" on numerous occasions, as well as bragging that he's successfully keeping Trump in check.

The White House (or someone close to them) leaked 49 questions that Bob Mueller might ask Trump. It was later revealed that Trump's own lawyer wrote up this list of questions, proving that the leak happened on Trump's end, not Mueller's. In other Mueller news, it was revealed that he's already threatened to subpoena the president to appear before a grand jury.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders has been twisting in the wind with all these revelations on the Stormy Daniels payout. She was reduced to answering all questions about her own inaccuracies on the subject with: "We give the very best information that we have at the time" -- whether than information is true, slightly true, or just a bald-faced lie.

Stormy Daniels, meanwhile, is ratcheting up the pressure on Trump by filing a separate defamation lawsuit against him. This should increase the chances that her lawyer will get to depose Trump at some point, of course. In fact, it's such an obvious move that we have been wondering why more people haven't also sued Trump for defamation. All you have to do is comb through his Twitter account to find dozens of actionable instances.

Paul Ryan monumentally screwed up this week, by trying to fire the House chaplain. While we ourselves don't even believe this should be a paid position in our federal government, we have to defend the guy from Ryan's capriciousness. Apparently, Ryan was miffed that the Catholic priest dared to say something during a daily prayer about the poor during the days when the House was considering the GOP tax cut plan for billionaires. Because we suppose Ryan's Bible is one of those condensed versions that strips out all that stuff Jesus said about being nice to the poor, or something. The chaplain dutifully handed in a resignation letter upon request, but then had second thoughts when he saw how much support he had from other members of Congress (from both parties, and especially from Catholics). Ryan apparently doesn't even have the power to fire him, he'd have to be removed by a vote of the full House. So he rescinded his resignation, and Ryan had to sheepishly welcome him back in the end. So it's not just the White House that's incompetent these days.

And finally, some amusing notes to close with, as usual. When France's leader visited the White House recently, he and Trump planted a symbolic oak tree on the White House lawn. The sapling was from the site of a historic U.S. Marine Corps battle in World War I, Belleau Wood. But a week after Emmanuel Macron left, the tree disappeared. So where's the tree? Nobody knows. This would be a dandy thing for someone to ask Sarah Huckabee Sanders, at the next presser, in fact.

A middle-school girl successfully photobombed a staunch Republican member of Congress during his visit to her school, by flipping him the bird when he was taking a selfie. Mom was reportedly not amused, but we thought the picture was pretty funny!

And in the spirit of being nice to people who deserve it even across the aisle, for the first time ever we have some praise for Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke. On a trip to a national park, Zinke's government vehicle was in a gas station when a woman approached the two security guys standing next to it and asked for a jumpstart.

Not only did they oblige the woman, but Zinke himself was the one who, after repositioning the vehicle, got out and hooked up the jumper cables. He didn't make a big deal of it, either, and the woman didn't even realize who he was until much later. This shows a basic humanity and selflessness rarely seen in such a powerful politician, we have to admit. What other cabinet member can you see personally helping you jumpstart your car? Steve Mnuchin? Scott Pruitt? Betsy DeVos? Not bloody likely. It'd be more likely they'd have their security guards arrest you for your effrontery than actively help you to get your car started. So we have to give Zinke some applause for how he handled it.





We sincerely hope we're not making a big mistake by doing so, but we have to give the Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week to our home-state senator, Dianne Feinstein.

Feinstein is not our most favorite Democratic senator, by a long shot. She's not even our most favorite Democratic senator from our own state. And we have more than a sneaking suspicion that she's making this move for purely self-protective purposes, since she is not only up for re-election this year but she has also drawn a strong progressive primary opponent (who might actually also be her only general election opponent, due to California's wacky election laws). She's being challenged from her left, so she's worried. Which is why we have a high degree of suspicion as to her motives.

Even so, Dianne Feinstein's announcement that she now supports state-level legalization of marijuana was pretty big news. As we detailed earlier this week, Feinstein has been not just against marijuana legal reform, she's been staunchly against legalization in particular. She was chair of both the "No" efforts for the two legalization ballot measures in California, for example.

But now she's apparently resigned herself to following the will of her state's voters, who approved legal recreational marijuana in 2016. This still leaves plenty of questions open about how deep her new-found support for legalization really is, which we listed in that previous article.

Still, no matter how politically crass her motives may have been, and no matter how she really feels about it, we have to welcome her to the ranks of Democratic politicians who are willing to fight for marijuana rights. The more the merrier, no matter how they got there, in other words.

Which is why we're awarding Dianne Feinstein this week's Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week. Who knows, maybe she'll surprise us -- in religion, often the most fervent are the newly-converted, right? We'd certainly like to hope she surprises us in this fashion, but for now her reluctant acceptance is enough.

{Congratulate Senator Dianne Feinstein on her Senate contact page, to let her know you appreciate her efforts.}





As with most such cases, a caveat is necessary before we present this week's Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week. This is just an accusation. It has been strongly denied. The accused has not had his day in court. So we could rescind this award later, if he manages to vindicate himself. But for the time being, we're handing the Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week to Representative Tony Cárdenas from California, based on the heinous nature of what he's been accused of.

Here's the full story:

Rep. Tony Cárdenas (D-Calif.) identified himself as the subject of a lawsuit in Los Angeles County claiming a local politician sexually abused a 16-year-old girl in 2007, and he vehemently denied the allegations through his attorney.

"My client is sickened and distraught by these horrific allegations, which are 100%, categorically untrue," Patricia Glaser said Thursday in a statement on Cárdenas's behalf.

"We respect victims who have found the strength to come forward and call out misconduct when it has actually occurred, but the type of baseless and reckless allegations that are contained in the complaint against my client can ruin the lives and careers of innocent people," Glaser said.

Cárdenas has been calling colleagues in recent days about the lawsuit and telling them he is innocent, according to a House Democratic aide. The three-term congressman is the chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus's political action committee.

Two other House Democratic aides confirmed that Cárdenas has been contacting colleagues about the lawsuit. Filed April 27, it did not identify him because under California law, the names of defendants in child sex abuse cases cannot be disclosed without court approval.

The court filing, which was first reported by the Los Angeles Times, alleges that "John Doe" first met the plaintiff in 2005 at a golf tournament when she was 14 and subsequently became a close friend of her family's. Two years later, the document claims, he fondled her breasts and genitals while driving her to the emergency room after the two played golf at Hillcrest Country Club in Los Angeles.

The girl had "suddenly collapsed to the ground" during the golf game after John Doe gave her a cup of ice water that "tasted distinctly different from both tap and filtered water," the lawsuit states.

The suit claims the actions constituted childhood sexual abuse under California law because she was under 18 at the time. The plaintiff asked for unspecified damages and a jury trial.

Cárdenas has admitted he is the "John Doe" in this lawsuit. He has not admitted anything else. But if the allegation is true, it puts him squarely in a category with both Bill Cosby (drugging women to molest them) and Roy Moore (a penchant for underage girls). That is not the best company to be in, obviously.

So, again, we will revisit this case as it progresses and may decide to rescind it later, but just on the details of the allegation alone, we have to give Representative Cárdenas this week's Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week. If true, this is beyond shameful, it's downright criminal -- twice over.

{Contact Representative Tony Cárdenas on his House contact page, to let him know what you think of his actions.}




Volume 483 (5/4/18)

Before we get to this week's talking points, we have one item which didn't really fit anywhere else. We stayed out of the fray in the debate over the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner this week, but we did note that one New York Times reporter tweeted out a perfect way to return the event to its roots and throw out all the glitz and nonsense (of what Washington insiders call "the nerd prom" ). We find we totally agree with Nick Confessore's proposals:

Modest proposal for WHCA:
--lose the cameras
--lose the roast
--celebrate the best of WH reporting
--instead of sources & celebrities, invite reporters working without the blessing of the First Amendment
--every year, pay tribute to reporters overseas who were killed for their work

Couldn't have put it better ourselves.

OK, with that out of the way, let's get on with the talking points. This week is an early entry into midterm election season, and it is pretty much devoted to ridiculing the Republican strategy, so far. Which, as it turns out, it pretty easy to do.



Criminals welcome!

A rather surprising new development in Republicanland.

"Remember when Republicans used to pride themselves on being the 'law and order' party? Those were the days.... Now we've got a Republican running for the Senate in West Virginia who was convicted of causing a mine disaster which killed 29 miners and spent time in prison. And a disgraced ex-sheriff running for Senate in Arizona who was convicted of contempt of court before the president pardoned him. Michael Flynn, a former Trump advisor who has already plead guilty to a felony, seems to be one of the most popular people to invite to Republican campaign rallies. A former congressman from New York is also a felon who hired undocumented workers, hid almost a million bucks from the tax authorities, and lied under oath is now running for his old office as well. Donald Trump has changed the Republican motto from 'Law And Order Party' to 'Criminals Welcome!' it now seems."



Cocaine and racism

But wait, there's more!

"Speaking of that GOP Senate candidate in West Virginia, he's been running a rather bizarre campaign so far. Dan Blankenship began calling his party's Senate leader 'Cocaine Mitch' without any explanation, and he's accused Mitch McConnell's father-in-law of being a, quote, Chinaperson, unquote. Somebody really needs to tell him that changing 'Chinaman' to 'Chinaperson' is just not enough, in the twenty-first century. Blankenship, however, feels differently, as he stated in a recent debate: 'This idea that calling somebody a "Chinaperson," I mean, I'm an American person. I don't see this insinuation by the press that there's something racist about saying a "Chinaperson." Some people are Korean persons, and some of them are African persons. That's not any slander there.' That's in addition to being a convicted criminal responsible for the deaths of 29 miners, of course. No wonder McConnell's spending over a million bucks on ads against this guy -- because he soon could be the face of the GOP in West Virginia."



Not funny

Meanwhile, other Republicans are busily putting their campaign ads together.

"Brian Kemp, a Republican running for governor in Georgia, just ran an ad that was supposed to somehow be funny, but in fact is not funny at all. In it, Kemp appears with a young teen next to him and reads the following: 'I'm also the proud father of three teenage girls. Here's the thing: If you want to date one of my daughters, you better have respect for women and a healthy appreciation for the Second Amendment.' While he's saying this, he's got a shotgun broken open on his lap, but by the end he readies it for firing and points it at the kid. Do Republicans really want a guy who jokes about shooting his daughters' boyfriends to represent them? Is there anyone out there who, after so many recent school shootings, still thinks this sort of thing is in any way funny?"



Looking forward!

USA Today uncovered an interesting statistic.

"Almost 13,000 campaign ads have mentioned Hillary Clinton since the start of the year, according to USA Today. In fact, more than 5,000 ads have run in the Ohio Republican gubernatorial primary alone. West Virginia and Indiana saw their share of anti-Hillary ads as well. And the ads' other big target? None other than Barack Obama. Someone really needs to wake the Republican Party up and inform them that it is now 2018, and Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have retired."



Why not just bribe the voters?

Meanwhile, things are getting desperate, up north.

"Wisconsin's governor, Scott Walker, jammed through a thoroughly transparent attempt to essentially bribe the state's voters to keep him in office. These bribes come in the form of an extraordinary mid-year tax rebate where parents can get a one-time payment of $100 per child. Almost 700,000 Wisconsin families will be eligible. This is so ham-fisted as to be laughable. 'Here's a hundred bucks -- vote for me!' Here's hoping Wisconsin voters see through this pathetic attempt at bribery and that the blue wave Walker has been warning of sweeps him right out of office."



Show me the door

Meanwhile, a few states southwards....

"The Missouri legislature is going to meet in special session for one solitary purpose: impeaching the Republican governor, who refuses to quit even after a sex scandal blew up in his face. The longer this situation drags on, the more the voters in the 'Show-Me State' are being shown how low the Republican Party has sunk. But there's some good news -- the longer this drags on, the better the chances are that Democrat Claire McCaskill will be returning to the Senate after the midterm election."



Rubio lets the cat out of the bag

We wrote about this at length earlier in the week.

"Senator Marco Rubio really let the cat out of the bag this week, in an interview where he criticizes the Republican tax cut as doing little or nothing for the average worker. This is GOP heresy, folks. Here are Rubio's exact words:"

There is still a lot of thinking on the right that if big corporations are happy, they're going to take the money they're saving and reinvest it in American workers. In fact they bought back shares, a few gave out bonuses; there's no evidence whatsoever that the money's been massively poured back into the American worker.

"What makes this admission even more astonishing is that this is the only thing Republicans have to run on this year. Since they have accomplished nothing other than giving Wall Street and billionaires a big tax cut, they were planning on trying to convince all the voters that it was the answer to all their prayers. If I were a Democratic politician running for office in November, I would immediately start running ads featuring that Rubio quote. Because he is really admitting that his party has absolutely nothing to run on at all."




Chris Weigant blogs at: ChrisWeigant.com
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Full archives of FTP columns: FridayTalkingPoints.com
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