January 3, 2019

Scarborough Calls for 25th Amendment: Trump's Presser Show's He's 'Obviously' Not Fit for Office

by Ken Meyer | Jan 3rd, 2019, 7:43 am

The way Joe Scarborough sees it, President Donald Trump‘s rambling 90-minute press conference is all the proof the country should need to invoke the 25th Amendment.

The conversation started for Morning Joe on Thursday with a discussion on Mitt Romney‘s criticisms of Trump and what the GOP really thinks about the president’s character. Scarborough eventually connected this to Trump’s press conference by saying that “if we had a cabinet that was filled with people with more character,” or if “we had a House and a Senate that took their job seriously,” they would’ve already taken action to remove Trump from office.

“There would be people going up to the White House this morning saying, ‘Mr. President, questions abound whether you were fit for this office,” Scarborough said. “If this continues, we are going to ask your Cabinet to take a vote on whether you were fit for office and invoke the 25th Amendment.”

Scarborough went on by saying that if any of America’s past presidents behaved as Trump does, Republicans would’ve taken up an impeachment against them a long time ago.





###

https://www.mediaite.com/tv/scarborough-calls-for-25th-amendment-trumps-presser-shows-hes-obviously-not-fit-for-office/

January 3, 2019

Incoming House Judiciary chairman plans to re-introduce Mueller protection bill Thursday

By Lauren Fox and Jeremy Herb, CNN

Updated 5:53 AM ET, Thu January 3, 2019

(CNN) - Incoming House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler of New York plans to re-introduce legislation to protect special counsel Robert Mueller on Thursday, the first day of the new Congress, two sources familiar with the matter told CNN.

The bill, which Nadler also introduced in this Congress as a companion measure to Senate legislation, is likely to be one of the early priorities for Democrats as they retake control of the House on Thursday. The legislation would provide recourse for Mueller and future special counsels to challenge any firings in the court system.

As Judiciary chairman, Nadler is one of the key Democrats poised to investigate President Donald Trump, and his committee would be in charge of any impeachment proceedings. But he and other Democratic leaders have talked up their desire to focus on legislation in the new Congress, including bills like the special counsel legislation.

Democrats are likely to push Senate Republicans take up the bill, though that appears unlikely at this point. The Senate Judiciary Committee advanced legislation to protect Mueller last year under a deal struck by outgoing Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley and the bill's bipartisan Senate authors. But the bill never moved to the Senate floor, as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said it was unnecessary.

more
https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/03/politics/jerry-nadler-mueller-protection-bill/index.html?utm_medium=social&utm_source=twCNNp&utm_content=2019-01-03T12%3A13%3A06&utm_term=image

January 2, 2019

New St. Louis Prosecutor Fires Attorney Who Didn't Get Indictment in Michael Brown Shooting

Source: Law & Crime


by Matt Naham | 2:46 pm, January 2nd, 2019

There’s a new prosecutor in town and he’s already shaking things up in St. Louis County.

Former Ferguson councilman Wesley Bell, who defeated Democrat Robert McCulloch in the Prosecuting Attorney election by a considerable margin last year after vowing to “fundamentally change the culture,” fired veteran assistant prosecutor Kathi Alizadeh on his second day in office, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported. McCulloch, who was head prosecutor since 1991, drew national scrutiny for his handling of the Darren Wilson–Michael Brown case.

The ex-cop Wilson shot and killed Brown in 2014, sparking intense racial unrest. When McCulloch announced that a grand jury would not indict Wilson on murder or involuntary manslaughter charges, violence and protests erupted in the streets of Ferguson.

“As tragic as this is, it was a not a crime,” McCulloch said at the time. “It doesn’t lessen this tragedy. There is still a loss of life here. The family is going to have that loss forever.

Read more: https://lawandcrime.com/race-relations/new-st-louis-prosecutor-fires-attorney-who-didnt-get-indictment-in-michael-brown-shooting/

January 2, 2019

Rudy Giuliani's Moscow Project Word Salad Is Pretty Tough to Digest

by Matt Naham | 4:27 pm, January 2nd, 2019

President Donald Trump‘s attorney Rudy Giuliani, ready and raring to take on 2019’s legal troubles, still hasn’t fully grasped 2018’s developments, if radio comments uttered Wednesday are any indication.

The latest “Rudy is great, but Rudy is Rudy” moment, this one dealing with the Moscow Project, is an extremely gourmet word salad. The comments, which were apparently made during a Fox Radio interview, revealed that Giuliani knew there was a Moscow Project, denied that there was a Moscow Project and didn’t know how long this non-thing went on.

https://twitter.com/AaronBlake/status/1080544427125493767

Indeed, this is a remarkable thing to say when you consider that ex-Trump attorney Michael Cohen recently pleaded guilty to lying to congressional investigators about how long discussions of the Moscow Project went on. In case you missed it, the Moscow Project was a proposed Trump Tower in Moscow that Russian President Vladimir Putin potentially stood to benefit from.

Cohen pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about these negotiations for a possible Trump real estate deal in Moscow. Cohen said that his claim that negotiations ended in January 2016 was a lie told to be consistent with Trump’s political messaging and out of “loyalty” to Trump. Instead, Cohen said, discussions about the Moscow Project continued into June 2016.

Donald Trump Jr.‘s testimony supported that. Trump Jr. said that he believed his father signed a letter of intent and said “yes” in response to the following question: “It’s been reported that in late 2015 or 2016 when now President Trump was running for office the Trump Organization was pursuing a plan to develop a massive Trump Tower in Moscow. Is that accurate?”

more
https://lawandcrime.com/opinion/rudy-giulianis-moscow-project-word-salad-is-pretty-tough-to-digest/

January 2, 2019

Trump Stuns With Foreign Policy Comments at Cabinet Meeting: Historians are 'Weeping'

by Josh Feldman | Jan 2nd, 2019, 4:00 pm

President Donald Trump stunned many this afternoon with foreign policy comments during his lengthy Cabinet meeting, specifically concerning the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

“Russia used to be the Soviet Union. Afghanistan made it Russia because they went bankrupt fighting in Afghanistan. Russia,” Trump said. “So you take a look at other countries––Pakistan is there. They should be fighting. But Russia should be fighting. The reason Russia was in Afghanistan was because terrorists were going into Russia. They were right to be there. The problem is it was a tough fight.”

https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1080549357232025601

The President was immediately blasted for those baffling remarks:

https://twitter.com/NoahCRothman/status/1080552721512566784
https://twitter.com/sbg1/status/1080551098635685889
https://twitter.com/joshrogin/status/1080554770727751681
https://twitter.com/BenjySarlin/status/1080543515640320005
https://twitter.com/davidfrum/status/1080552461960650752
https://twitter.com/KyleWOrton/status/1080554620919971840
https://twitter.com/ddale8/status/1080553793979367424
https://twitter.com/RadioFreeTom/status/1080557005721518081

Additionally, MSNBC’s Chris Hayes called the President’s comments on Syria “utterly incoherent”:

https://twitter.com/chrislhayes/status/1080560047955066880

###

https://www.mediaite.com/online/trump-stuns-with-foreign-policy-comments-at-cabinet-meeting-historians-are-weeping/

January 2, 2019

Romney Won't Commit to Backing Trump in 2020: 'I Want to See What the Alternatives Are'

Source: Mediaite



by Josh Feldman | Jan 2nd, 2019, 4:43 pm

Senator-elect Mitt Romney (R-UT) spoke with CNN’s Jake Tapper today about his decision to write an op-ed critical of President Donald Trump to kick off 2019.

The former governor and presidential candidate emphasized he still wants to work with the President where they agree on policy, but he wanted to make a point of expressing where he stands on “matters that relate to the divisiveness” Trump plays a big part of. He gave examples of things like Charlottesville when he publicly spoke out against the President, but the conversation ended up broadening out to 2020.

Tapper asked Romney if he regrets accepting Trump’s endorsement in his Senate race.

“He was endorsing me, I wasn’t endorsing him,” Romney said, before adding, “And I haven’t decided who I’m going to endorse in 2020. I going to wait and see what the alternatives are.”

Read more: https://www.mediaite.com/tv/romney-wont-commit-to-backing-trump-in-2020-i-want-to-see-what-the-alternatives-are/

January 2, 2019

Trump doesn't understand his leverage is gone - By Jennifer Rubin

By Jennifer Rubin
Opinion writer
January 2 at 9:00 AM

The Post reports:

One wondrous result of the 2018 election, we will discover, is the near-total irrelevance of Trump’s tweets. He can say whatever wacky thing he wants, throw out whatever insults he pleases, but Pelosi (D-Calif.), the incoming House speaker, is not going to be thrown off track or even alarmed. She takes his tweets as confirmation he is clueless and unstable.

Of course, Pelosi would like nothing better than to demonstrate Democrats can govern and the Republican Senate cannot. (“Pelosi responded to Trump’s ‘let’s make a deal’ invitation by tweeting that the president had “given Democrats a great opportunity to show how we will govern responsibly & quickly pass our plan to end the irresponsible #TrumpShutdown — just the first sign of things to come in our new Democratic Majority committed to working #ForThePeople.”)

Pelosi has her plan ready to go: Pass a clean resolution for six of the seven appropriations bills to fund through the end of the fiscal year and the Homeland Security appropriations through Feb. 8. Trump cannot prevent her from doing it, nor can Freedom Caucus gadfly Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), who declared the move a “non-starter” — as if his consent were necessary.

more
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/01/02/trump-doesnt-understand-his-leverage-is-gone/

January 2, 2019

The walls around Trump are crumbling. Evangelicals may be his last resort.

By Greg Sargent
Opinion writer
January 2 at 10:22 AM

Why does President Trump continue to keep the government shut down over his demand for a border wall, when large majorities oppose it? The most obvious answer is that he senses his long-term political survival depends on keeping his wall-adoring base behind him as his legal travails mount.

What is more interesting, though, is that the core of that base support may grow increasingly dependent on the white evangelical Christians who continue fervently supporting Trump no matter what he says and does. And for these voters, it appears, the wall is an extraordinarily potent totem, one whose significance for them calls for better explication as we head into a protracted showdown over it.

On Wednesday, Trump will meet with Democratic leaders over the shutdown and the wall. Axios reports that Trump will stage this meeting in the Situation Room to dramatize “security concerns at the border,” which is absurd, since in reality the wall has little to do with border security and is only about giving him the win he thinks he needs. But this also shows again that Trump senses just how important the wall has become as a political theater piece in the eyes of his base. And one fascinating component of this is white evangelical support for it.

Among white evangelical Christians, support for the wall has risen nearly 10 points since Trump campaigned on it. In the most recent Public Religion Research Institute poll, in September 2018, a staggering 67 percent of them favor Trump’s wall. PRRI provided me with data on this question going back to April 2016:



more
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/01/02/walls-around-trump-are-crumbling-evangelicals-may-be-his-last-resort/

January 2, 2019

For Bernie Sanders, Claims of Sexism in 2016 Campaign Hang Over 2020 Bid

By Sydney Ember and Katie Benner
Jan. 2, 2019

In February 2016, Giulianna Di Lauro, a Latino outreach strategist for Senator Bernie Sanders’s presidential operation, complained to her supervisor that she had been harassed by a campaign surrogate whom she drove to events ahead of the Democratic primary in Nevada.

She said the surrogate told her she had “beautiful curly hair” and asked if he could touch it, Ms. Di Lauro said in an interview. Thinking he would just touch a strand, she consented. But she said that he ran his hand through her hair in a “sexual way” and continued to grab, touch and “push my boundaries” for the rest of the day.

“I just wanted to be done with it so badly,” she said.

When she reported the incident to Bill Velazquez, a manager on the Latino outreach team, he told her, “I bet you would have liked it if he were younger,” according to her account and another woman who witnessed the exchange. Then he laughed.

more
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/02/us/politics/bernie-sanders-campaign-sexism.html

January 2, 2019

Romney's Op-Ed Prompts Call From Within RNC To Protect Trump In 2020 Primary

By Kate Riga
January 2, 2019 9:50 am

Incoming Sen. Mitt Romney’s (R-UT) critical op-ed about President Donald Trump has renewed fears within the RNC of a moderate Republican mounting a primary challenge to Trump in 2020 and consideration of altering the rules to protect him.

According to a Wednesday Washington Examiner report, RNC committeeman Jevon Williams sounded the alarm in a mass email.

“Unfortunately, loopholes in the rules governing the 2020 re-nomination campaign are enabling these so-called Republicans to flirt with the possibility of contested primaries and caucuses,” Williams wrote.

“While President Trump would win re-nomination it wouldn’t come quick and it wouldn’t be inexpensive. Any contested re-nomination campaign—even a forlorn hope—would only help Democrats,” he continued. “Accordingly, I am asking for your support to take the unprecedented step of amending the rules to close loopholes in the re-nomination campaign…”

An RNC spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

more
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/romney-op-ed-prompts-rnc-call-protect-trump