From the Washington Examiner, we learn how much Donald Trump has been profiting from people paying for access to him: If you pay $200,000 a year to the company Donald Trump owns, you too can have access most weekends to the president and his top officials. As an alternative, your organization could cut a $150,000 check to bring in a couple of … Read More
Take Him At His Word
The right wing Washington Times reports: White House counselor Kellyanne Conway said Monday that President Trump has access to information and intelligence others do not and that “credible news sources” suggested there might be more to look into, after Mr. Trump accused former President Barack Obama over the weekend of tapping phones in Trump Tower during last year’s campaign. “Well, … Read More
In Other News, The Travel Ban
As we watch Attorney General Jeff Sessions not remember, then remember, but only sort of kind of remember whether or not he talked with the Russians around the same time they were hacking into the DNC, and as we learn about more and more meetings between the Trump campaign team and the Russians even though they all denied those meetings, … Read More
The Trump-Russia Connection
With a line that runs through newly confirmed Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, Rachel Maddow connects the dots between a billionaire Russian oligarch and a Donald Trump deal worth tens of millions of dollars. It’s long (Rachel tends to baby-step us through things) but thought-provoking. At the end of the day, I have to ask…. so what? Any illegalities? It might … Read More
Not Quite
Fantasy (Breitbart headline): Reality: More photos from today's MASSIVE pro-Trump rallies. pic.twitter.com/b6ofD1aP9Y — Daniel Dale (@ddale8) February 27, 2017 My last tweet Showing The Crowd from today's MASSIVE Trump rallies. pic.twitter.com/SuSn7L9ARh — Daniel Dale (@ddale8) February 27, 2017
Draft Republican Plan Leaked
Politico has obtained a draft bill from House Republicans for Obamacare repeal. The draft closely follows proposals put forward by House Speaker Paul Ryan and the proposal Tom Price introduced last year. He’s now popular vote loser Donald Trump’s Secretary of Health and Human Services. It defunds Planned Parenthood completely. For everybody. No matter what they visit PP for. But … Read More
Two Bills Signed Into Law By Trump So Far
(1) Repeal of the “Disclosure of Payments by Resource Extraction Issuers” Rule. The rule was that oil, gas and mineral companies had to disclose (to the Securities and Exchange Commission) any payments (taxes, royalties, fees, bonuses, etc) given to foreign governments relating to commercial development of oil, natural gas, or minerals. Designed to prevent companies from engaging in corruption with … Read More
Trump’s Truly Bizarre Press Conference
Imma get a video up as soon as one is available, but I think you’re going to be hearing about “President Trump’s February 16 Press Conference” somewhere down the road, perhaps as a citation in a legal filing. To his credit, he took the hard question. And the big news, when all is said and done, is that Trump would have authorized … Read More
The Law of Leaks
Today is the day two story of the Flynn resignation and the White House wants us to focus on a different aspect of the story: the rampant leaks from the intelligence community. But for perspective, let’s start off with Trump’s most interesting morning tweet: The Democrats had to come up with a story as to why they lost the election, … Read More
Last Night’s Bombshell: Trump Campaign Advisers Talked With Russia Throughout The Campaign
The New York Times broke the story at 9:11 pm EST. (Obviously, the story is longer than that). The first two paragraphs are the bombshell; the third one there is an important caveat. In some ways, it is not news — in a largely ignored story from November, CNN reported that Russia said it was in contact with Trump campaign … Read More
Lot Of Hypocrisy About Leaks
The Pentagon Papers was a leak from Daniel Ellsberg. It helped de-legitimize the Vietnam War. Deep Throat was Mark Felt, a top FBI official. He gave Woodward and Bernstein the deep background on the Watergate scandal. Edward Snowden leaked information about US government surveillance programs. Chelsea Manning leaked documents and video relating to Iraqi air strikes, diplomatic cables, and Gitmo, … Read More
Flynn Exit
So… less than a month into the Administration, Trumps’ National Security Adviser, General Michael Flynn, resigns. WHY he resigned is important — he said (in a letter) that he regrets giving incomplete information to the Vice President. Ummm…. interesting way to put it. Another way to put it is… Flynn LIED to the Vice President. And yet an even better … Read More
Inside The White House
Apparently, Trump is learning you can’t run the government like you run a family business. You know why? Checks and balances. Civics 101. (I could have told him that years ago, but he didn’t ask me) Being president is harder than Donald Trump thought, according to aides and allies who say that he’s growing increasingly frustrated with the challenges of … Read More
Redstate’s Patterico’s Analysis of the 9th Circuit Decision Against Trump
Don’t normally quote from the conservative Redstate blog, and I rarely agree with Patterico (the author) on anything. But this analysis is so good — so spot on — that I am reprinting it in full: As you have no doubt heard, the Ninth Circuit today issued an opinion upholding the District Court’s TRO halting much of Trump’s order on … Read More
It’s Hard To Keep Up With All That’s Going Down
Just yesterday — on ONE day… Trump advisor Kellyanne Conway broke ethics rules promoting Ivanka Trump clothes, which wouldn’t have happened if Trump hadn’t tweeted about how unfairly Nordstrom’s was treating Ivanka Trump by dropping her line of clothing. Then we learned that Trump, when talking to Putin last week, had to put Putin on hold in order to ask … Read More