“Why do we have a Second Amendment? It’s not to shoot deer. It’s to shoot at the government when it becomes tyrannical!”
— Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), on Twitter, June 23, 2016.
Daily Archives
June 14, 2017
21 posts · Wednesday
Trump Is Now Under Investigation
“The special counsel overseeing the investigation into Russia’s role in the 2016 election is interviewing senior intelligence officials as part of a widening probe that now includes an examination of whether President Trump attempted to obstruct justice,” the Washington Post reports.
“The move by Special Counsel Robert Mueller to investigate Trump’s own conduct marks a major turning point in the nearly year-old FBI investigation, which until recently focused on Russian meddling during the presidential campaign and on whether there was any coordination between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin. Investigators have also been looking for any evidence of possible financial crimes among Trump associates.”
“Trump had received private assurances from former FBI Director James Comey starting in January that he was not personally under investigation. Officials say that changed shortly after Comey’s firing.”
Why So Many Republicans Still Grovel to Trump
John Cassidy: “Trump isn’t merely enabling the Republican right; with his daily pratfalls and incendiary statements, he is also drawing attention away from the Party’s policy initiatives. Imagine for a moment if a more normal Republican—a Marco Rubio or a Jeb Bush or a John Kasich—were in the White House. With no James Comey, Robert Mueller, or Jeff Sessions to chew on, the news networks would surely be focusing on health-care reform and the scandalous manner in which the G.O.P. is trying to ram through a piece of legislation that would affect a sixth of the American economy and cause tens of millions of Americans to lose their insurance.”
“Small wonder, then, that so many Republicans are willing to kiss Trump’s ring. He’s given the G.O.P. what it has long wanted: a White House willing to go along with its reactionary agenda, and a President who provides it with political cover. As long as Trump sticks to his side of the deal, he can expect to receive the loyalty he so prizes.”
Did Trump Cause Himself to be Subject of Investigation?
Ryan Lizza: “In his letter announcing Comey’s dismissal, Trump made a point of advertising these conversations with Comey, noting, ‘I greatly appreciate you informing me, on three separate occasions, that I am not under investigation.’ When Comey went public, last week, with his account of his interactions with Trump, the President’s defenders pounced on the fact that Comey corroborated Trump’s claim.”
“The irony in all of this is that Trump’s actions may very likely have caused him to personally come under investigation.”
“There is some public evidence that Mueller is taking the obstruction accusation seriously. He asked for and received all the memos that Comey wrote memorializing Comey’s interactions with Trump. Why would Mueller need those unless he was looking into possible obstruction?”
Fox News Drops ‘Fair & Balanced’ Slogan
Gabriel Sherman: “As Fox News moves further into the post–Roger Ailes era, the network is shedding one of its most iconic elements. According to network executives, Fox News has abandoned the marketing slogan ‘Fair & Balanced.’ The decision was made last August after Ailes’s ouster by Fox News co-president Jack Abernethy, because the phrase had ‘been mocked,’ one insider said. Another executive explained that the tagline was ‘too closely associated with Roger.’ Fox executives have been instructed by management to market the network by its other tagline: ‘Most Watched. Most Trusted.'”
“It is hard to overstate the significance of what shedding ‘Fair & Balanced’ means for Fox News. (It would be like the New York Times giving up ‘All the News That’s Fit to Print.’) Ailes invented the slogan when he launched the network in 1996, and over the years it became a quasi-religious doctrine among Fox’s anchors and viewers.”
Christie Is Least Popular Governor In New Jersey History
A new Quinnipiac poll finds Gov. Chris Christie (R) now has the lowest approval rating of any New Jersey governor in recorded history, 15% to 81%.
Qatar Will Buy U.S. Warplanes Despite Trump Comments
“Qatar will sign a deal to buy up to 36 F-15 jets from the U.S. even as a political crisis in the Gulf leaves the Middle East nation isolated by its neighbors and criticized by President Trump for supporting terrorism,” Bloomberg reports.
“Qatar’s defense minister will meet with Pentagon chief Jim Mattis on Wednesday to seal the agreement.”
Will Next Week’s Special Election Get Hacked?
Ahead of next week’s special election, Politico reports that Georgia’s voting systems “are uniquely vulnerable, security researchers say—and the state has ignored efforts to fix the problem.”
“A 29-year-old former cybersecurity researcher with the federal government’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, Lamb, who now works for a private internet security firm in Georgia, wanted to assess the security of the state’s voting systems… But his curiosity turned to alarm when he encountered a number of files, arranged by county, that looked like they could be used to hack an election. Lamb wrote an automated script to scrape the site and see what was there, then went off to lunch while the program did its work. When he returned, he discovered that the script had downloaded 15 gigabytes of data.”
Bonus Quote of the Day
“Not with respect to the Second Amendment. The Second Amendment right to bear arms is to ensure that we always have a republic. And as with any constitutional provision in the Bill of Rights, there are adverse aspects to each of those rights that we enjoy as people. And what we just saw here is one of the bad side effects of someone not exercising those rights properly. But we’re not going to get rid of freedom of speech because some people say some really ugly things that hurt other people’s feelings. We’re not going to get rid of Fourth Amendment search and seizure rights because it allows some criminals to go free who should be behind bars.”
— Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL), quoted by Axios, when asked if today’s shooting changes his mind about gun control laws.
Democrats Start Out with Edge for Virginia Governor
First Read: “Democrats start out with the advantage in this fall’s Northam-vs.-Gillespie general election. One, turnout suggests Democrats have enthusiasm on their side: There were more than 540,000 votes in the two-person Dem race, while the three-person GOP contest had 366,000 votes. (That turnout disparity looks like New Jersey, not Virginia.) Two, Democrats today hold a unity event with Northam and Perriello, while Republicans aren’t unified. ‘There is one word you will never hear from me, and that’s ‘unity,’’ Stewart told supporters, per the Washington Post. And three, President Trump’s job approval rating in Virginia is in the 30s. Add them all up, and you’d rather be Ralph Northam than Ed Gillespie, although we still have five months to go.”
GOP Lawmaker Shot at Baseball Game
Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) was shot at a practice for a congressional baseball game, CNN reports.
“Scalise appears to have been shot in the hip and it appears two Capitol Hill police agents were shot.”
Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL) told the AP that Scalise “crawled into the outfield, leaving a trail of blood.”
The New York Times reports that about 50 shots were fired.
Quote of the Day
“At times there could be a good shutdown, at times there may not be a good shutdown. There could be reasons at various times why that is the right outcome.”
— Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, quoted by The Hill, when asked about President Trump’s tweet earlier this year that “Our country needs a good ‘shutdown’ in September to fix mess!”
Mueller Could Use Grand Jury to Get Sessions to Answer
Mike Allen: “Dems smell blood, but it’s not necessarily Jeff Sessions’. The attorney general held his own at his high-stakes Senate hearing, at one point raising his voice to declare he was ‘not stonewalling,’ and resented the ‘secret innuendo being leaked out there about me.'”
“But Democrats tell me that with his dodges, artful and otherwise… Sessions left a host of openings — about himself and President Trump — that congressional investigators will pursue. Bob Mueller’s prosecutors can be expected to do the same.”
Said ex-Justice department spokesman Matt Miller: “Sessions can probably get out of ever giving the answer to a Republican Congress, but my guess is his performance earned him a ticket to a grand jury.”
Most Trump Real Estate Now Sold to Secretive Buyers
“Since President Trump won the Republican nomination, the majority of his companies’ real estate sales are to secretive shell companies that obscure the buyers’ identities,” a USA Today investigation has found.
“Over the last 12 months, about 70% of buyers of Trump properties were limited liability companies – corporate entities that allow people to purchase property without revealing all of the owners’ names. That compares with about 4% of buyers in the two years before.”
Trump Sued by Nearly 200 Democratic Lawmakers
USA Today: “Nearly 200 Democratic members of Congress filed a lawsuit against President Trump on Wednesday morning alleging that his continued ties to his business empire violate the U.S. Constitution. The unprecedented legal action accuses Trump of violating the Emoluments Clause of the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits federal officials from accepting gifts or titles from foreign governments without congressional approval.”
“The lawsuit will have the greatest number of congressional plaintiffs of any lawsuit against the president in the nation’s history.”
House Republicans Say Trump Sold Them Out
Playbook: “Imagine if you’re a House Republican, and voted for the leadership’s health-care bill in May after being told that you were doing the newly elected president a solid. You listened to the White House’s pleading — perhaps you got a phone call from Vice President Mike Pence, Chief of Staff Reince Priebus or even the president himself. The administration was on the Hill nonstop to push their legislation. You explained to your constituents that the late-in-the-game changes made to the bill helped cover more people. You celebrated with him in the Rose Garden after passage.”
“Now you hear the president has gone behind closed doors and told senators the House bill is ‘mean’ and says it doesn’t do enough to cover people. Wouldn’t that anger you? Well, it’s angering a lot of House Republicans, who believe their president put them at political risk with that comment.”
“If you’re a House Republican, are you going to help the White House next time after the president privately just dumped all over you after you cast a vote for him? A lot of GOP lawmakers are buzzing about it, and many are none too pleased with the president right now.“
Trump Won’t Fire Mueller… Yet
New York Times: “The president… began entertaining the idea of firing Mr. Mueller even as his staff tried to discourage him from something they believed would turn a bad situation into a catastrophe, according to several people with direct knowledge of Mr. Trump’s interactions. … For now, the staff has prevailed.”
“But people close to Mr. Trump say he is so volatile they cannot be sure that he will not change his mind about Mr. Mueller if he finds out anything to lead him to believe the investigation has been compromised. And his ability to endure a free-ranging investigation, directed by Mr. Mueller, that could raise questions about the legitimacy of his Electoral College victory, the topic that most provokes his rage, will be a critical test for a president who has continued on Twitter and elsewhere to flout the advice of his staff, friends and legal team.”
Trump Gives Military Authority to Set Troop Levels
President Trump has given Defense Secretary Jim Mattis the authority to set troop levels in Afghanistan, a U.S. official told Reuters, opening the door for future troop increases requested by the U.S. commander.
