DonViejo
DonViejo's JournalAping His Boss, Scaramucci Tries To Use DOJ Like A Personal Enforcement Arm
By ALLEGRA KIRKLAND Published JULY 28, 2017 6:00 AM
White House staffers aren’t supposed to just call up the Justice Department or FBI and complain about a personal grievance. Yet that is exactly what newly-minted Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci claimed to have done during a combative Thursday morning CNN interview, disclosing that he had contacted Attorney General Jeff Sessions and various “buddies” in the FBI over his concerns about leaks coming from senior White House staff.
“You know why I like bringing up the Department of Justice and the FBI?” Scaramucci said. “Because people who’ve done something wrong, it makes ‘em nervous.”
These comments came hours after Scaramucci offered an expletive-filled rant to New Yorker reporter Ryan Lizza about how he believed his rival, Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, was behind the latest leak, and that he’d “called the FBI and the Department of Justice” about this “felony.”
Setting aside that his concerns were sparked by misplaced anger over reporting on his financial disclosure form, which is a publicly available document, the Scaramucci kerfuffle marked just the latest example of a member of the Trump administration attempting to use the Justice Department as something of a personal enforcement arm. President Donald Trump has been the most public face of this norm-shattering: the FBI director he fired, James Comey, testified that the President asked him to swear his loyalty and end a federal investigation into ousted national security adviser Michael Flynn.
Contacts like Scaramucci’s run up again longstanding, binding regulations that strictly limit contact between the White House and Justice Department. Since the Watergate era, each new attorney general and each White House general counsel has laid out an updated version of their contact policy, dictating that only senior members of each body may be in contact with each other about investigations, and even then only in very specific instances.
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http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/trump-scaramucci-treat-justice-department-like-personal-enforcement-arm
GOP Rep.: Maybe McConnell Should Step Down From Leadership Role
Source: Talking Points Memo
By NICOLE LAFOND Published JULY 28, 2017 9:39 AM
After Republican senators failed to pass a skinny Obamacare repeal bill early Friday morning, one GOP congressman is calling on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) to step down.
During an interview with CNN on Friday, Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL) said the news that three Republicans — Sens. John McCain (R-AZ), Lisa Murkowski (R- AK) and Susan Collins (R-ME) — tanked a bill that only needed a simple majority to pass was an “abject failure of the United States Senate” and questioned whether top leadership needed a shakeup.
“It was a failure from the newest member Luther Strange (R-AL) at the bottom to the very top with Mitch McConnell as majority leader,” he said, urging senators to stay in D.C. until “the job gets done.”
“Now is not the time to leave the American people in a lurch. Now is not the time to leave American health care at risk,” he said. “I hope they won’t quit. If they’re going to quit, by golly, maybe they ought to start at the top with Mitch McConnell leaving his position and letting somebody new, somebody bold, somebody conservative take the reins so they can come up with a plan that can get through the United States Senate.”
Read more: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/gop-rep-mcconnell-should-step-down-replace-with-somebody-bold
Conservative Pundits Melt Down After Senate Repeal Effort Dramatically Fails
By CAITLIN MACNEAL Published JULY 28, 2017 9:58 AM
After the Senate’s bare-bones bill to repeal Obamacare suddenly crashed and burned in the wee hours of Friday morning, conservative pundits went into full freak-out mode, blasting the Senate for its failure.
Some specifically aimed their ire at Sen. John McCain (R-AZ). McCain cast the final, decisive vote on Friday morning against the bill, bringing the Senate’s third stab at repealing Obamacare to a grinding halt. His vote against the measure shocked Republican senators standing in the chamber, especially since he returned to the Capitol earlier this week to cast a vote that allowed the Senate to proceed to debate on the legislation in the first place.
This last twist left conservative pundits reeling. Former Republican presidential candidate and Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee was so angry with the three senators who voted down the bill that he suggested changing the way senators are elected.
https://twitter.com/GovMikeHuckabee/status/890837365891018752
Fox News’ Eric Bolling also called for the ouster of the three Republicans who killed the bill.
https://twitter.com/ericbolling/status/890910513542057984
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https://twitter.com/DLoesch/status/890813211510845441
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http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/conservative-reactions-senate-obamacare-repeal-failure
Trump urges Senate GOP to end filibuster for future votes
Source: The Hill
BY MAX GREENWOOD - 07/28/17 10:24 AM EDT
President Trump called on the Senate Friday to change its rules to require a 51-vote majority to pass individual bills without risking a Democratic filibuster.
"If Republicans are going to pass great future legislation in the Senate, they must immediately go to a 51 vote majority, not senseless 60," he wrote on Twitter. "Even though parts of healthcare could pass at 51, some really good things need 60. So many great future bills & budgets need 60 votes."
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/890931465885798400
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/890935044474380288
Trump's tweets came hours after the Senate narrowly rejected a scaled-back ObamaCare repeal bill, effectively derailing Republicans' current efforts to repeal parts of the healtlhcare law.
Doing away with the filibuster would not have ensured the so-called "skinny" repeal bill's success, a fact that Trump appeared to acknowledge in his tweets. The measure needed only 51 votes to pass, and three Republicans — Sens. John McCain (Ariz.), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) and Susan Collins (Maine) — voted against it.
Read more: http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/344294-trump-urges-senate-gop-to-end-filibuster-for-future-votes
Mattis 'appalled' by Trump tweets announcing transgender ban: report
Source: The Hill
BY JOHN BOWDEN - 07/28/17 10:07 AM EDT
Defense Secretary James Mattis was caught off-guard and "appalled" by President Trump's announcement that he was banning transgender people from serving in the military, according to a New York Times report.
Mattis, who was on vacation at the time of Trump's decision, only had one day's worth of notice before Trump tweeted his announcement of the policy, the paper reported. Sources close to the defense secretary told the Times that Mattis was infuriated by the tweets, and saw them as an insult to transgender Americans currently serving in the military.
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Mattis, according to the Times, had been quietly lobbying Republicans for months to defeat a GOP-led amendment to the 2017 spending bill that would prevent the military from spending money on transition surgery or hormone therapy for transgender service members. The report states that Mattis initially resisted the initial policy allowing transgender Americans to serve in the armed forces, but accepted that the policy was to remain in place.
His predecessor, former Obama Defense Secretary Ash Carter, ripped the Trump administration for reversing the policy.
Read more: http://thehill.com/policy/defense/344290-mattis-appalled-by-trump-tweets-announcing-transgender-military-ban-report
Peggy Noonan: 'Weak and sniveling' Trump is not as strong as his wife
BY AIDA CHAVEZ - 07/28/17 10:02 AM EDT
Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan says President Trump’s primary problem as a leader is not that he is “inexperienced, crude, an outsider” but that he is “weak and sniveling” and “undermines himself almost daily by ignoring” traditional norms of American masculinity.
“He throws himself, sobbing, on the body politic,” Noonan wrote Thursday in a Wall Street Journal column.
“He’s a drama queen. It was once said, sarcastically, of George H.W. Bush that he reminded everyone of her first husband. Trump must remind people of their first wife. Actually his wife, Melania, is tougher than he is with her stoicism and grace, her self-discipline and desire to show the world respect by presenting herself with dignity.”
Noonan, a conservative who's been critical of Trump in the past, said half the president’s tweets show “utter weakness,” as his attacks on news organizations and members of his own party are all “whimpering accusation and finger-pointing.” She said Trump’s “public brutalizing of Attorney General Jeff Sessions isn’t strong, cool and deadly” but “limp, lame and blubbery.”
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http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/344292-peggy-noonan-weak-and-sniveling-trump-is-not-as-strong-as-his
'Morning Joe': Its 'Failure Friday' for Trump White House
BY AIDA CHAVEZ - 07/28/17 08:55 AM EDT
“Morning Joe” co-host Mika Brzezinski is declaring it "Failure Friday" for President Trump, saying that if you want to know what failure looks like, “just take a look at the last 36 hours of the Trump presidency.”
Brzezinski on Friday said that after the “skinny” ObamaCare repeal bill failed late Thursday night, the GOP “faces a reckoning with an embarrassing failure in Congress and a failing presidency.”
“President Trump tried to lay blame for the healthcare failure at the feet of three Republicans and the Democrats but in the end he wasn’t able to keep his party unified and failed to deliver on a key campaign promise for his base,” she said. “The president has failed in his attempts to bully the attorney general into resigning — Jeff Sessions vowing to stay on as long as Trump sees that as appropriate. The president did succeed, in unifying practically all of Washington against treatment of the attorney general.”
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) cast the crucial surprise vote that killed the Senate GOP ObamaCare repeal bill early Friday morning and, at least temporarily, ended the GOP's hopes of killing former President Obama’s signature legislation.
Brzezinski also said Trump "failed to change the conversation" surrounding his failures with his tweets banning transgender individuals from serving in the military, with the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman saying the Pentagon will not make any changes to its transgender policy until Trump clarifies what he meant.
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http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/344285-morning-joe-its-failure-friday-for-trump-white-house
Rand Paul blocks McConnell from setting up defense bill vote
Source: The Hill
BY MAX GREENWOOD - 07/28/17 09:37 AM EDT
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kent.) blocked Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's (R-Kent.) request early Friday morning for the chamber to advance the National Defense Authorization Act.
McConnell made the request in the immediate aftermath of the Senate's rejection of a scaled-back bill to repeal parts of the Affordable Care, asking for unanimous consent to proceed to the defense policy legislation.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), who rejected Sen. John McCain's (R-Ariz.) request on Thursday to pause the healthcare debate and move on to the NDAA, said after the healthcare vote that he would let the bill move forward. But Paul, who has been among the Senate's most vocal ObamaCare critics, voiced an objection to McConnell's request without explaining why, stalling the NDAA proceedings.
Instead, the Senate will take up judicial nominations when lawmakers meet on Monday.
Read more: http://thehill.com/policy/defense/344289-rand-paul-blocks-mcconnell-from-setting-up-defense-bill-vote
U.S. economy rebounds in the second quarter
Source: The Washington Post
By Ana Swanson July 28 at 9:36 AM
The U.S. economy rebounded strongly between April and June, government data showed Friday morning, driven by a pickup in spending from the federal government and consumers.
The country’s gross domestic product, a broad measure of economic activity, grew 2.6 percent at an annualized pace in the second quarter of 2017, the Commerce Department said.
Economists had expected growth to rebound from a weaker reading in the first quarter, which is typically dragged down due to seasonal problems with measurement. GDP grew at an annual rate of 1.2 percent in the first quarter, compared with 1.8 percent growth in the fourth quarter of 2016.
Less spending by state and local governments, as well as lower investment in housing and company inventories, dragged on growth in the second quarter. But those effects were offset by an increase in other types of investment, consumer spending and stronger exports.
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/07/28/u-s-economy-rebounds-in-the-second-quarter/?utm_term=.31d24ce38dec&wpisrc=al_alert-economy&wpmk=1
The most appalling line in Scaramucci's rant contained zero profanity
By Fred Hiatt July 27 at 7:24 PM
“I’m here to serve the country.”
In the hate-filled, profane, self-important rant of White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci to the New Yorker’s Ryan Lizza, there were many appalling statements, but that was the one that stopped me cold.
We all know people who serve their country. They do so by putting on a uniform and fighting overseas, or joining the Foreign Service and representing us in foreign lands. They mentor a young person who needs guidance or take a foster child into their home or help build a house for a family in need. They run for school board or for Congress. Or, yes, they accept a president’s offer to work in the White House. If they do so, it is with a sense of respect and humility, an understanding that the opportunity is a privilege. I’ve known communications directors and speechwriters and chiefs of staff who have served presidents of both parties. I’ve agreed with them sometimes, and sometimes disagreed; liked and admired some more than others; some may even have thrown a curse word my way once in a while. But never have I known one who felt anything but a sense of wonder and gratitude for the chance to serve at the apex of our democratic government.
And now this: a communications director who, before even unpacking his bags, is disparaging the president’s chief of staff as a “f—ing paranoid schizophrenic” and the president’s chief strategist as a man who is just “trying to suck [his] own c—.” A staffer who professes loyalty to the president but demeans the presidency and everything it stands for. Who tweets one thing, then retracts it and lies about what he meant.
You might say, what do you expect? This is the kind of person who will be hired by a president who boasts about grabbing “p—-,” mocks a disabled journalist, hijacks a Boy Scout rally, publicly humiliates his own attorney general — and yet dares call himself “more presidential” than Ronald Reagan, Franklin Roosevelt, Thomas Jefferson or George Washington. And you would be right. Donald Trump is our president.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2017/07/27/the-most-appalling-line-in-scaramuccis-rant-contained-zero-profanity/?utm_term=.950e6593b0e6&wpisrc=nl_headlines&wpmm=1
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Name: DonGender: Male
Hometown: Massachusetts
Home country: United States
Member since: Sat Sep 1, 2012, 03:28 PM
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