January 27, 2019

'Why Are They Always So Loyal?' Trump Was Convinced That Dems Would Cave

By Kate Riga

January 26, 2019 12:09 pm

President Donald Trump saw his convictions about loyalty upended over the shutdown, harboring shock that Democrats didn’t come over to his side and resentment that he couldn’t keep his own house in order.

According to a Friday Washington Post report, Trump had been operating under the belief that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) would be unable to keep her caucus in line as the shutdown progressed.

“Why are they always so loyal?” he reportedly complained in a staff meeting.

Trump also miscalculated the will of his own party, and voiced belated frustration with former House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) for having “screwed him” by not securing wall funding when Republicans controlled all branches before he’d “gone fishing.”

Ultimately, the defection of six Republican senators who voted for the Democratic funding bill put Trump over the edge.

Sen. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) dropped the bomb that his members were getting unruly; Trump eventually agreed that the shutdown had to end.

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https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/why-so-loyal-trump-convinced-dems-would-cave

January 27, 2019

Castro: Third-party bid by Schultz 'would provide Trump with his best hope of getting re-elected

Castro: Third-party bid by Schultz 'would provide Donald Trump with his best hope of getting re-elected'
BY ALICIA COHN - 01/27/19 10:17 AM EST

Former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro (D) on Sunday urged Starbucks founder Howard Schultz to reconsider running as an independent candidate for president in 2020.

Schultz "would provide Donald Trump with his best hope of getting re-elected," Castro said on CNN's "State of the Union."

"I would suggest to Mr. Schultz to truly think about the negative impact that would make."

Castro pointed to a recent poll showing Trump trailing likely 2020 Democratic candidates as proof that Trump is the underdog in the upcoming election.

-snip-

"[Trump's] only hope, if things stay the same, is to get a third-party [candidate] to siphon off votes," Castro claimed.

full article
https://thehill.com/homenews/sunday-talk-shows/427142-castro-third-party-bid-by-schultz-would-provide-donald-trump-with

January 27, 2019

Corsi says information about him in Mueller indictment against Stone 'is accurate'

Source: The Hill


BY ALICIA COHN - 01/27/19 09:47 AM EST

Jerome Corsi said Sunday that the information about him in special counsel Robert Mueller's indictment against longtime Trump confidant Roger Stone is "accurate."

"I will affirm that what is in the indictment about me is accurate. And I will affirm that, if asked to in court," Corsi, a conservative political commentator, said on CNN's "State of the Union."

https://twitter.com/CNNPolitics/status/1089531425924222978

-snip-

According to the indictment, Stone obstructed the investigation by the House Intelligence Committee into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election by lying about his contacts with Wikileaks.

-snip-

Corsi has indicated he will testify against Stone if subpoenaed. He told CNN he would testify honestly to what he remembered from his communication with Stone, even if Stone claimed differently.

Read more: https://thehill.com/homenews/sunday-talk-shows/427137-corsi-says-information-about-him-in-mueller-indictment-against

January 27, 2019

A Conspiracy Theory That Makes Sense - Joe Conason

January 24, 2019 3:05 am

Like so many other things in American life, political conspiracy theories just aren’t as good as they used to be.

Back in the years before the Civil War, the Know-Nothings told one another that the pope was sending Catholic immigrants — the forebears of many of today’s anti-immigrant fanatics — to take control of the United States so that he could rule from Rome. In more recent years, the John Birch Society members worried that almost every elected official in Washington, including the war hero President Dwight D. Eisenhower, was secretly a “conscious agent of the Communist Party.” However incredible, those paranoid imaginings explain otherwise incomprehensible social changes.

Today’s most popular conspiracy theory, known by the shorthand QAnon, is an online phenomenon that assures its hundreds of thousands of true believers that behind the chaos personified by Donald Trump, there is order, that contrary to the “fake news” purveyed by real newspapers and television networks, President Trump is fully in charge.

Along with special counsel Robert Mueller, secretly a Trump ally, the president is preparing to round up a gang of criminals and perverts led by the Clintons, the Obamas, Tom Hanks and various other entertainers. According to QAnon, the “storm” will take down almost every prominent Democrat who now torments Trump.

The QAnon wackiness sprang from the toxic roots of an election-year theory, “Pizzagate” — which claimed that the Clintons and their nefarious gang were running a child abuse network out of a Washington pizzeria basement. A fool who believed that nonsense burst into the pizzeria with a semi-automatic, fired a couple of shots and then went to prison for a long time. The scummy operators who twisted his poor sick mind with internet memes are still at large.

Why would any Americans place their faith in such insanity? It’s true that some of our neighbors are very stupid. But it’s also true that we are living in another era of inexplicable political phenomena — the age of Trump.

So we must make sense of a president who not only lacks moral character and personal integrity but also seems unable and unwilling to even do the job he sought, who spends his days watching television and typing on his phone. He is a president who seeks to enrich himself personally at the expense of the country, a president whom millions of citizens suspect of betraying his office. And he is currently under investigation by Mueller, a former FBI director, for offenses that may well justify that suspicion.

Many people simply cannot abide this disturbing reality; they either shut it out or accept a fabricated alternative, no matter how crazy. Of course, there is another conspiracy theory that explains the barrage of madness that we confront every day.

That theory is a plausible way of understanding why we have a president who undermines every alliance that undergirds our national security, who threatens to withdraw from NATO and insults our friends in Canada by depicting them as a threat. It is a way to understand why this president would create a government shutdown that not only demoralizes the entire federal workforce but also increasingly compromises national defense by damaging military morale. It is a way to see why he would so casually compromise the intelligence and counterintelligence capacities of the FBI and the CIA, indeed the entire intelligence apparatus of the United States. It explains why he would withdraw so abruptly from Syria, why he would abandon the American commitment to human rights and democratic values, and why he would continually express his support for the authoritarian regime ruled by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Is Donald Trump a witting asset of the Russian Federation, foisted on America by the Kremlin? While there appear to be many clues — as well as simple common sense — there is, as yet, no smoking gun of proof. But if you need a conspiracy theory, that one makes far more sense than QAnon.

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http://www.nationalmemo.com/a-conspiracy-theory-that-makes-sense/

Article posted with the permission of the author

January 27, 2019

Former CIA Director: Trump Campaign Collusion 'Quite Evident'

Dan Desai Martin

January 27, 2019 4:36 am

Now that close Trump adviser Roger Stone has been indicted, former CIA director John Brennan is more convinced than ever that Robert Mueller’s investigation will prove damning for Trump.

Brennen said Friday that he thinks it’s “quite evident” the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to influence the 2016 election, that this collusion may have “gone to the very top” to Trump himself, and that it could even rise to the level of “criminal conspiracy.”

“There was an extensive effort to try to influence the outcome of the [2016] election that involved the Russians, that involved U.S. persons, and that may have gone to the very top of the Trump campaign,” Brennan said during an appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”

“I defer to the special counsel’s office to make the determination about what they did crossed that threshold from collusion — which I think is quite evident — to criminal conspiracy,” he said.

Brennan also speculated that more indictments are on the way, and noted that Trump and his family members have a “fair amount” of vulnerability to being indicted.

“It’s whether or not it’s past that threshold that is going to lead then to an indictment of individuals that are close to Mr. Trump, that are part of his family, or others,” Brennan said.

more
http://www.nationalmemo.com/former-cia-director-trump-campaign-collusion-quite-evident/

January 27, 2019

You're Known By The Hat You Wear

Cynthia Tucker

January 27, 2019 4:36 am



Symbols are powerful, conveying profound messages with the simplest images.

Soldiers carry a flag into battle and face death to hoist it aloft. Christian churches are identified by T-shaped pieces of wood or metal affixed to prominent places. In some ancient Eastern religions, the swastika represented peace, but it is today universally recognized as a sign of racism and anti-Semitism, violent repression and genocide. Each of those symbols carries a deep meaning recognized by those who display it.

During his 2016 campaign, President Donald Trump launched his own symbol — a baseball cap with the words “Make America Great Again” emblazoned on it. Because of the incendiary rhetoric he spewed during his rallies, the MAGA cap quickly became associated with a bundle of prejudices — xenophobia, racism, sexism, Islamophobia. If you wear the cap, you aren’t just a fan of Trump; you’re also a bigot who wants to build a wall on the southern border.

Or so the thinking goes.

That helped to make last weekend’s encounter between the Covington Catholic High School teens and a Native American man on the Washington Mall especially fraught: Several of the Covington students were wearing MAGA caps. (And regardless of what you’ve heard about the students being misrepresented, some of them can indeed be heard sarcastically whooping Hollywood versions of Indian war cries and miming a tomahawk chop.)

more
http://www.nationalmemo.com/youre-known-by-the-hat-you-wear/

January 27, 2019

KKK Robe Sells for $3,000 at Auction

POSTED 6:15 PM, JANUARY 26, 2019, BY WNEP WEB STAFF, UPDATED AT 04:41PM, JANUARY 26, 2019

SPRING TOWNSHIP, Pa. -- A Ku Klux Klan robe fetched a big sum at an auction in Snyder County.

According to the auctioneer, an anonymous collector purchased the KKK hood and robe for $3,000 at the Beaver Springs Auction Center on Saturday.

The auction center had received some negative feedback about the robe, including a call from a local pastor.

Auctioneers say someone sold the KKK gear on consignment. That means the seller gets the money from the sale, excluding a percentage to the auction house.

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https://wnep.com/2019/01/26/kkk-robe-sells-for-3000-at-auction/

January 27, 2019

Mulvaney: Trump will secure the border 'with or without Congress'

Source: The Hill


BY BRETT SAMUELS - 01/27/19 09:29 AM EST

Acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney said Sunday that President Trump will secure the southern border "with or without Congress," and did not explicitly rule out the possibility of another government shutdown in the coming weeks.

Mulvaney indicated that the president is prepared to declare a national emergency to direct construction of a wall along the southern border if Congress is unable to reach a funding deal to his liking.

"It’s still better to get it through legislation," Mulvaney said on "Fox News Sunday," calling the legislative process "the right way" to secure funding for a wall.

"At the end of the day, the president’s commitment is to defend the nation and he’ll do it either with or without Congress," he added.

Read more: https://thehill.com/homenews/sunday-talk-shows/427136-mulvaney-trump-will-secure-the-border-with-or-without-congress

January 27, 2019

Americans fault Trump for chaotic government shutdown, as more believe US is 'on the wrong track'...

Source: CNBC



Americans fault Trump for chaotic government shutdown, as more believe US is ‘on the wrong track’: NBC-WSJ poll

PUBLISHED 30 MIN AGO

John Harwood
@JOHNJHARWOOD

KEY POINTS

An NBC-Wall Street Journal poll showed that by 63 percent to 28 percent , a margin greater than two to one, Americans believe the country is “off on the wrong track” rather than “headed in the right direction.”

By a 50 percent to 37 percent margin, Americans blame President Donald Trump, rather than Democrats in Congress.

The government shutdown that just ended has deepened Americans’ discontent with the state of the nation--and they place the blame primarily on President Donald Trump, a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll released on Sunday showed.

The poll’s results showed that by 63 percent to 28 percent , a margin greater than two to one, Americans believe the country is “off on the wrong track” rather than “headed in the right direction.” That’s significantly worse than the 56 percent to 33 percent finding from the December NBC/WSJ poll, taken before the shutdown.

And by 50 percent to 37 percent, Americans blame Trump, rather than Democrats in Congress, for the debacle. That result reflects their disagreement with his stance on the issue that caused it.

luralities disapprove the president’s handling of border security and immigration issues, and say would-be immigrants across the southern border with Mexico would strengthen rather than weaken America. A 52 percent majority opposes construction of a wall or fence along the U.S.-Mexico border, while 45 percent favor it.



Read more: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/27/trump-faulted-for-government-shutdown-nbc-wsj-poll.html

January 27, 2019

Pelosi Emerges from Shutdown Stronger Than Ever

January 27, 2019 at 7:53 am EST By Taegan Goddard

“Nancy Pelosi’s first showdown with President Trump began with him publicly questioning her political viability. It ended with the House speaker winning an unmitigated victory and reviving her reputation as a legislative savant,” the Washington Post reports.

“Trump’s capitulation — agreeing to reopen the federal government after a 35-day standoff without funding for a U.S.-Mexico border wall — generated rave reviews for Pelosi from fellow Democrats and grudging respect from Republicans who watched as she kept an unruly party caucus united in the face of GOP divide-and-conquer tactics.”

“Pelosi emerges from the shutdown as a stronger leader of her party — and more popular with the public, by early measures — as Democrats eye aggressive efforts to counter Trump’s agenda through ambitious legislation and tough oversight. That suggests the shutdown might have been a strategic misstep for Trump, in addition to a tactical error.”

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https://politicalwire.com/2019/01/27/pelosi-emerges-from-shutdown-stronger-than-ever/