DonViejo
DonViejo's JournalThe other bad news for Trump on Monday: New approval-rating lows
By Philip Bump October 30 at 4:41 PM
Even before news broke of indictments against his former campaign chairman and an admission of guilt by a former campaign adviser, President Trump was having a rough day.
On Sunday evening, a poll from NBC News and the Wall Street Journal indicated that Trump’s approval rating had hit a new low, sinking to 38 percent. More worrisome for the president? Since September, the drop was biggest among independents, whites and whites without a college degree — key components of the coalition that won Trump the White House. NBC and the Journal also reported that the 38 percent rating was lower than any other president had seen at a similar point in their first terms in the modern era.
On Monday, new data from Gallup reiterated that same message. In Gallup’s daily tracking poll, which looks at three days of national polling, Trump’s approval rating hit a new low of 33 percent and his disapproval a new high of 62 percent. The net approval — those who approve minus those who disapprove — hit a new low at minus-29.
At 33 percent, Trump’s low is now lower than any approval measured for Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton or Barack Obama. There have been two days on which Gallup found more people approving of Trump than disapproving — both during his first week in office.
The daily Gallup numbers tend to be noisy, as the graph above suggests, moving up and down from day to day. As a result, we instead prefer to look at Gallup’s weekly averages — in which Trump sank back down to his low of 35 percent.
more
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2017/10/30/the-other-bad-news-for-trump-on-monday-new-approval-rating-lows
1M people sign Dem donor's petition to impeach Trump: report
Source: The Hill
BY AVERY ANAPOL - 10/31/17 07:36 AM EDT
Tom Steyer’s petition to impeach President Trump has reportedly gathered more than 1 million signatures in the ten days since the Democratic mega-donor started his campaign.
Axios reported that the petition, which the billionaire has been promoting through advertisements and letters to lawmakers, has been signed 1,119,720 times.
Steyer began calling for impeachment earlier this month, writing letters to Democrats on Capitol Hill and to mayors and governors nationwide. In those letters, he calls on officials to publicize their stances on impeaching Trump, saying they “have a duty to speak out.”
Steyer launched a multimillion dollar ad campaign slamming Trump’s actions on health care, immigration and the environment. The campaign included a television ad that ran during “Fox and Friends,” a show the president is known to watch often.
Read more: http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/357944-one-million-people-sign-dem-donors-petition-to-impeach-trump
Kremlin notes U.S. case against ex-Trump aides does not accuse Russia
Source: Reuters
OCTOBER 31, 2017 / 6:46 AM / UPDATED 24 MINUTES AGO
MOSCOW (Reuters) - The Kremlin said on Tuesday it had noted that U.S. charges against President Donald Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort and another aide, Rick Gates, did not point the finger at Russia over alleged meddling in U.S. politics.
Federal investigators probing alleged Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election, something Moscow denies, charged Manafort and Gates with money laundering on Monday.
Despite the charges being brought as part of a five-month-old investigation into alleged Russian efforts to tilt the election in Trump’s favor and into potential collusion by Trump aides, the charges, some going back over a decade, centered on Manafort’s work for Ukraine’s former government, not Russia‘s.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Moscow had noted the absence of allegations against Russia in the indictment, saying Moscow had always said it had never meddled in the U.S. election.
Read more: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-russia-kremlin/kremlin-notes-u-s-case-against-ex-trump-aides-does-not-accuse-russia-idUSKBN1D019F?il=0
Steve Bannon Tells Trump To Bring In New Lawyers as He Looks For Ways to Kneecap Mueller
Trump’s former top dog increasingly feels like he has to take matters into his own hands.
LACHLAN MARKAY
ASAWIN SUEBSAENG
10.30.17 5:11 PM ET
Steve Bannon spoke on the phone with his old boss, Donald Trump, on Monday and offered a message: get yourself some new lawyers.
The former White House chief strategist has grown increasingly concerned that the president’s legal team is falling down on the job, proving too accommodating to Special Counsel Robert Mueller, and leaving Trump vulnerable as former campaign aides are handed indictments.
“In terms of Steve’s thinking of how the president is handling this, yeah, he thinks the legal team was not prepared for what happened today—they’re not serving the president well,” a source close to Bannon said.
Added another confidant: Bannon believes Ty Cobb and John Dowd, the top two attorneys on the president’s legal team, “are asleep at the wheel.”
Bannon talked to Trump after those indictments were issued on Monday to express these concerns directly. Two sources, one working inside and one outside the White House, with knowledge of the conversation told The Daily Beast that Bannon advised Trump not to demote Dowd and Cobb, but to bring in new lawyers to work over them, in the hopes that fresh blood would bring an order and "ruthlessness" to Trump's legal team that Bannon sees as desperately incompetent.
more
https://www.thedailybeast.com/steve-bannon-thinks-trumps-legal-team-is-asleep-at-the-wheeland-hes-looking-for-ways-to-kneecap-mueller
Trump Approval Rate Falls to New Low
October 30, 2017 at 1:26 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard
A new Gallup poll finds President Trump’s approval rate has sunk to a new all-time low of 33% to 62%.
###
https://politicalwire.com/2017/10/30/trump-approval-rate-falls-new-low/
Russian Trolls Tried to Start a Black 'War on Christmas'
Source: The Daily Beast
Using typo-filled holiday sweatshirts and plagiarized articles, Kremlin-backed troll websites tried—and failed—to push a black Christmas boycott.
BEN COLLINS
10.31.17 5:00 AM ET
A website hosted by Russia’s “troll farm” in St. Petersburg attempted to push an African-American boycott of Christmas with articles and a line of typo-ridden merchandise last year.
BlackMattersUS, which independent Russian media outlet RBC identified as one of the most influential websites and troll accounts operated out of the Kremlin-backed Internet Research Agency, pushed T-shirts imploring its users to “Say no! To ho-ho-ho,” alongside a picture of a candy cane.
As representatives from Facebook, Twitter, and Google this week are set to testify before Senate and House Committees on Russian interference in the 2016 election, BlackMattersUS’ tone-deaf efforts to launch a boycott while posing as African-Americans shows the lengths the troll farm would go to try—and sometimes fail—to sow racial discord in the U.S.
The shirts are often nonsensical and filled with phrases that don’t make sense. One shirt, sold by the U.S. shirt printing company Represent on BlackMattersUS’ custom Christmas-themed store, reads “Dear Cops, Don’t Shoot—SUCK.” The phrase encompasses two candy canes and a Christmas ornament.
Read more: https://www.thedailybeast.com/russian-trolls-tried-to-start-a-black-war-on-christmas
John Kelly on Whether He Owes Rep. Wilson An Apology: 'No Absolutely Not'
Source: Mediate
by Joseph A. Wulfsohn | 11:15 pm, October 30th, 2017
On Monday night, Laura Ingraham sat down with White House Chief of Staff John Kelly and brought up the feud he had with Rep. Frederica Wilson (D-FL).
Kelly doubled down on own remarks about the congresswoman during a 2015 appearance at an FBI ceremony where he claimed she was bragging about how she got funding for the building (which was disproven) by saying that a “number of people” (he noted were current and former FBI agents) who were there had “volunteered to come forward” to back up his remarks about Wilson because they saw her before and after her speech.
-snip-
Ingraham then pressed him on Kelly’s accusations against Wilson, while conceding the congresswoman “used the word ‘I’ a lot,” but still didn’t “brag” about the funding. The former general called her speech and her comments at the reception following the ceremony a “package deal” and he “didn’t want to get into it.”
“But do you feel like you have something to apologize for?” Ingraham asked.
“Do I? No,” Kelly responded. “Never. I will apologize if I need to, but for something like this? Absolutely not. I stand by my comments.
Read more: https://www.mediaite.com/tv/john-kelly-on-whether-he-owes-rep-wilson-an-apology-no-absolutely-not/
Roy Moore: Impeach Judge for Blocking Trans Military Ban
Alabama GOP Senate candidate Roy Moore issued a Monday night statement calling for the removal of a judge who struck down President Donald Trump’s ban on transgender people in the military. Moore, a hardline religious conservative who has argued to remove Muslim congressman Keith Ellison from office, has made anti-transgender sentiment a central talking point of his campaign, which he is projected to win. In the statement, Moore argued that the American Psychiatric Association had classified “transgenderism” as a mental disorder until 2013. (The APA used to consider “gender identity disorder” a real condition, but ruled to eliminate it in 2012.) Moore stated that “Judge Kollar-Kotelly should be impeached by the House of Representatives for unlawful usurpation of power” for ruling against Trump’s ban on transgender troops. “She has also interfered with the powers of the president as commander in chief of the armed forces,” Moore also claimed.
https://twitter.com/Bencjacobs/status/925148481928466433
###
https://www.thedailybeast.com/roy-moore-impeach-judge-for-blocking-trans-military-ban
BIG Stuff in the Papadopolous Plea Deal - Josh Marshall
By JOSH MARSHALL Published OCTOBER 30, 2017 4:03 PM
Here are some other points to note in the Papadopolous plea deal …
1. In April, the Trump campaign knew that intermediaries from the Russian government that the Russians had “dirt” on Secretary Clinton in the form of “thousands of emails.” Those were almost certainly references to emails later released through Wikileaks in the second half of the year. Papadopolous and the campaign colleagues he spoke with about his conversations may not have known precisely that they had DNC emails and emails from John Podesta. But they would have realized what was happening once those emails emerged in July through October. They must have wondered: why would Russian agents have emails incriminating Hillary Clinton? The entirety of the exchanges has a deep similarity to the Trump Tower meeting with Trump Jr. on June 8th – just extended over a much longer period of time. They knew. They were looped deep into what Russia was doing.
2. There’s a key passage in the Papadopolous plea agreement that I don’t think has gotten a lot of attention yet.
Here’s a tweet from President Trump with an image from that meeting. You’ll see President Trump is there. Now-Attorney General Jeff Sessions is there. Papadopolous is the second man in a clockwise direction from Sessions in the lower left.
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/715725628465680386
With Trump and Sessions there, according to the plea, Papadopolous told the group “he had connections that could help arrange a meeting between then-candidate Trump and President Putin.” That’s not against the law in itself. It is bizarre to think that a presidential candidate would travel abroad to meet with the President of Russia during a campaign. But there’s no law against it. This is a key fact because Papadopolous seems to have given a little speech about what he was up to and what he could do in a small meeting with Trump and Sessions themselves. This happened one week after Papadopolous had met in London with as yet unnamed people who he knew had close ties with the Russian government. This is very significant.
###
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/big-stuff-in-the-papadopolous-plea-deal
Grassley On Mueller Indictments: 'Good To See' Dept. Of Justice Enforce FARA
Source: Talking Points Memo
By ESME CRIBB Published OCTOBER 30, 2017 2:52 PM
Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) on Monday said the indictment of President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort and a business associate demonstrates that the Department of Justice is “taking seriously its responsibility to enforce the Foreign Agents Registration Act” (FARA).
“While we don’t have any more information regarding the current status of the special counsel’s investigation other than what has already been made public, it’s good to see the Justice Department taking seriously its responsibility to enforce the Foreign Agents Registration Act,” Grassley said in a statement.
He said failure to register as a foreign agent under FARA is a “dirty little secret” for “lots of people across the political spectrum in Washington.”
“I’ve been raising concerns about lackluster enforcement of this foreign influence disclosure law for years now, regardless of administration or political party,” Grassley said. “It should be enforced fairly and consistently, regardless of politics or any other factor.”
Read more: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/grassley-manafort-failure-to-register-under-fara
Profile Information
Name: DonGender: Male
Hometown: Massachusetts
Home country: United States
Member since: Sat Sep 1, 2012, 03:28 PM
Number of posts: 60,536
