NEWS FROM THE FASCIST ☠️CLOWN🤡 — “After Multiple Deaths And A Mob Riot, Trump Finally Admitted His Presidency Is Ending”

Storming The Capitol by Randall Enos, Easton, CT
Storming The Capitol by Randall Enos, Easton, CT
Republished under license
Trump Regime Emoji
Trump Regime
Trump Clown
Donald J. Trump
Famous American Clown
(Officially titled “Ass Clown”)
Artist: Scott Scheidly
Orlando, FL
Reproduced by permission

In a video otherwise filled with lies and inaccuracies, the president said a new administration would take over on Jan. 20.

Read the report from Matt Berman @ BuzzFeed News here:

After Multiple Deaths And A Mob Riot, Trump Finally Admitted His Presidency Is Ending

**************

After four years of non-stop lies, malicious incompetence, unbridled racism, cruelty, stupidity, sedition, corruption, grift, graft, unnecessary deaths, and other “crimes against humanity,” the evil 🦹🏿‍♂️ clown show 🤡 pulls out of town leaving Joe, Kamala, and the decent folks in America (their supporters — i/o/w, us) to deal with The Party of Treason, its scumbag “core traitors,” (Cruz, Hawley, McCarthy, et al), toady enablers of treachery (McConnell, Graham, et al), and anti-American supporters.

🗽⚖️🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

01-07-21

TRUMP’S DHS STOOGES LIED! — Gov’s Own Photos & Reports Show Filthy, Disgusting, Inhumane Detention Conditions — Lawyers, Reporters, Dems Vindicated — DHS Officials Who Denied Mistreatment Lied — Why Haven’t They Been Fired?

https://apple.news/A72_kcc-XTqCtxbEfuTrUzQ

Julia Ainsley
Julia Edwards Ainsley
Investigative Reporter, NBC News
AnnieRose Ramos
Annie Rose Ramos
Producer, NBC News

WASHINGTON — Government investigators have identified poor conditions in another sector of the southern border, publishing graphic photos showing extreme overcrowding in Rio Grande Valley migrant facilities and finding that children there did not have access to showers and had to sleep on concrete floors.

Investigators for the Department of Homeland Security who visited border stations in the El Paso, Texas, sector in May found similar conditions: Migrants being held in temporary facilities for weeks rather than days, single adults living in standing room-only cells with no space to lie down, and concerns about serious health risks.

The investigators for the DHS Office of the Inspector General toured five Border Patrol facilities and two ports of entry in the Rio Grande Valley sector during the week of June 10 and published their report as a “management alert” to the department on Tuesday.

Read the full report here.

The Rio Grande valley of Texas has the highest volume of immigrants along the United States-Mexico border. At the time of the visits by investigators, Border Patrol was holding 8,000 detainees in custody, with 3,400 being held longer than the 72-hour limit.

One senior manager at a facility called the situation a “ticking time bomb,” according to the report. When immigrants detained in the facilities saw investigators walking through, they banged on the cell windows and pressed notes against the plexiglass to show the length of time they had spent in custody. One said “Help 40 Day Here.”

On Monday, NBC News published findings by the inspector general that detailed poor conditions for migrants in border stations in El Paso as far back as May 7. Acting DHS Secretary Kevin McAleenan said at a press conference Friday that reports of poor conditions for children in border stations were “unsubstantiated.” McAleenan said children were given showers as soon as they could be made available.

“Most single adults had not had a shower in CBP custody despite several being held for as long as a month,” according to the latest report on conditions in the Rio Grande Valley.

The report also detailed what it called “security incidents” in which immigrants have tried to escape and once refused to return to their cells after being removed during maintenance. To address the problem, Border Patrol called in its special operations force to “demonstrate it was prepared to use force if necessary,” the report said.

*****************************

Go to the link to see the DHS IG’s own photos documenting the abusive conditions and to get a link to the redacted report showing how McAleenan, Provost, Trump and others are coving up an intentionally created human rights disaster inflicted upon the most vulnerable.

We’re beyond “malicious incompetence” and basically into covering up possible criminal misconduct. Why haven’t McAleenan, Provost, and the other human rights abusers been fired? I guess it’s because this is the Trump Administration where neither the law nor morality matter!

And, this doesn’t even factor in the racism, misogyny, cruelty, and and white supremacy infecting the Border Patrol as exposed in a recent report by Pro Publica https://www.propublica.org/article/secret-border-patrol-facebook-group-agents-joke-about-migrant-deaths-post-sexist-memes

To state the obvious, if Pro Publica can find this “hidden in plain sight” trash, it’s been right there under the noses of McAleenan, Provost, Morgan, and other DHS malicious incompetents all along. They just chose to look the other way.

PWS

07-02-19

POLITICS: METAMORPHOSIS: 🤥🤥🤥🤥🤥How Ralph Northam Morphed Into A “Trump-Style” Liar Before Our Eyes — Resign Now, Ralph, Before You Inflict Even Further Harm On Our Commonwealth & Our Nation!

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/02/ralph-northam-is-lying.html

William Saletin writes in Slate:

Ralph Northam, the governor of Virginia, swears he’s telling the truth. On Friday, Northam confessed to appearing in a racist photo in a 1984 yearbook. On Saturday, after Democrats called on him to resign, he reversed himself and said it was a case of mistaken identity. “I will stand and live by my word,” Northam told reporters at an afternoon press conference. He quoted the honor code of his alma mater, the Virginia Military Institute: “A cadet shall not lie, cheat, steal, or tolerate those who do.”

I don’t know whether Northam is one of the people in the photo. But I do know he’s been lying in his responses to this story. The evidence is in his own words. Let’s take his denials, one by one.

1. He believed right away that he wasn’t in the picture. The photo appears in the yearbook of Eastern Virginia Medical School, where Northam was a student. It seems to have been taken at a party, and it appears on a page that bears Northam’s name, alongside what are clearly pictures of him. It shows one person in blackface and another in a Ku Klux Klan hood and robes. The two people are hard to identify. In a written statement that Northam read aloud at his press conference, he asserted that when he was first shown the photo, “I believed then and now that I am not either of the people in that photo.”

That denial contradicts Northam’s previous statements. The photo was initially posted on a conservative website, Big League Politics, on Friday afternoon. Reporters confirmed that it was in the yearbook. Around 6 p.m., Northam issued a statement acknowledging that it was “a photograph of me.” He apologized for “the decision I made to appear as I did in this photo.” Two hours later, he released a video statement in which he apologized for “my past actions,” “the decisions I made,” and “the harm my behavior caused.” Northam’s Friday statements, like his Saturday statement, were scripted, so he couldn’t have misspoken. Either he believed on Friday that he wasn’t in the photo—in which case his Friday statements were false—or he didn’t, in which case his Saturday statement was false.

Northam also told the Virginia Legislative Black Caucus that he was in the picture. According to three lawmakers, the governor confirmed in a Friday-night meeting with the caucus that he was in the photo. “Last night, from his mouth to my ear, he apologized to me for the mistake that he made,” Sen. Louise Lucas, a member of the caucus, reported on Saturday. Did Northam mislead the caucus? Or is he misleading everyone else now?

2. He knew he couldn’t have done it. This is a stronger denial, based on Northam’s moral certainty that he isn’t the sort of person who could have worn such costumes. At the press conference, he claimed that when he first saw the photo, “My first impression, actually, [was] that this couldn’t be me.” In fact, it was more than impression. “There is no way that I have ever been in a KKK uniform,” he declared. “I am not the person in that uniform. And I am not the person [in blackface] to the right.”

But if Northam was that certain of his innocence, why didn’t he say so on Friday? When he was asked at the press conference, he pleaded, “I didn’t know at the time.” He claimed to have confessed initially because “based on the evidence presented to me at the time, the most likely explanation [was] that it was indeed me in the photo.” He added, “It has taken time for me to make sure that it’s not me.”

3. He could tell just by looking at the photo. “It is definitely not me. I can tell by looking at it,” Northam told reporters on Saturday. Later, he repeated, “If one looks at the picture, it’s not my picture.” That’s not consistent with the governor’s confessions of guilt or his confessions of uncertainty. The picture was the first piece of information he had. If it was sufficient to exonerate him, why didn’t he say so? When a reporter posed that question at the press conference, all Northam could say was, “I didn’t study it as well as I should.”

That’s just not credible. What changed between Friday night and Saturday morning wasn’t Northam sitting up late with a magnifying glass. It was two other things. First, based on the governor’s initial confessions, a wave of Democrats, including the Virginia Democratic Party and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, announced that he should resign. Second, Northam contacted his former medical school classmates. At the press conference, he said they told him they had “never seen me in any outfit like that.” He also said he had asked a former classmate, “Is there a possibility, you think, that someone could have put a photo on the wrong page?” Northam said that this classmate told him photos had been misplaced “on numerous pages in this very yearbook. … Photos laid out on a table. One could mistakenly get put on the wrong page. This happened numerous times in this yearbook. And I suspect that’s what happened in this case.”

Northam presented these conversations with his classmates as evidence of his innocence.
And maybe that’s what they’ll turn out to be. But for now, they’re just evidence that he checked to see whether anyone in his class might have information that could support the case against him. Nobody remembers him wearing anything like the costumes in that picture. He has also found a witness who could testify that pictures were sometimes misplaced. So what Northam knows now—but didn’t know on Friday night—was that if he denies he’s in that photo, he might be able to get away with it.

I hope Northam isn’t in that picture. But one way or the other, he’s been lying.

*****************************

Sorry, Ralph, but forgiveness and redemption have to be earned, not demanded! And, lying, making a spectacle of yourself and our state, and insulting our intelligence with lies, contradictions, and obvious evasions aren’t a good start.  Go now, before the Legislature has to act to remove you. You have become Donald Trump. And, that’s not a good thing for Virginia or our nation

PWS

02-03-19

TAL @ SF CHRONICLE: DHS Enforcement Policies Calculated To Maximize Kiddie Detention @ ORR, Create Backlogs, Increase Suffering, & Maximize Long-Term Damage To Kids, Families!

More than 14,000 immigrant children are in U.S. custody, an all-time high

WASHINGTON — The number of undocumented immigrant children in government custody has topped 14,000 for the first time, a rise that shows no signs of slowing as the Trump administration enforces policies that are keeping them in care longer.

 

There were 14,056 unaccompanied immigrant minors in Health and Human Services custody on Friday, according to a government source familiar with the number. A spokeswoman for the Department of Health and Human Services confirmed that the total had reached approximately 14,000.

 

That number tops records set just two months ago, putting further strain on an already overburdened system.

 

The issue of immigrant children in government custody gained widespread attention in the spring and summer when the Trump administration separated thousands of families at the southern border. Almost all those separated children have since left Health and Human Services care, but the total number of children in the system has steadily grown.

 

The reason is that children who arrive unaccompanied in the U.S. are spending more time in holding facilities before they can be released to suitable adults, often family members. One change that has especially slowed that down is an agreement Health and Human Services signed earlier this year for Immigration and Customs Enforcement to do background checks on potential sponsors.

 

ICE confirmed in September that it had used that information to arrest undocumented adults who came forward to take custody of children. Previous administrations didn’t look into people’s immigration status when deciding whether to release children into their care, but that changed under President Trump.

 

The Health and Human Services care system was intended to be a temporary bridge for often-traumatized children into a more stable home while they sought legal status in the U.S. But the Trump administration changed course, declaring that no undocumented immigrant was off limits from potential arrest and deportation.

More: https://www.sfchronicle.com/nation/article/More-than-14-000-immigrant-children-are-in-U-S-13399510.php

********************************************

The nasty incompetents in charge of these programs need some meaningful oversight from both Congress (read House) and the Article III Courts. When this sorry episode is finally over, there should be some accountability for both the politicos and the career bureaucrats who have designed and implemented a system intended to inflict maximum harm and suffering on kids and their families, and, in some cases, lied to cover up or mask what they are really doing. Nielsen should be first in line as she fits all the categories: intentionally inhumane (probably illegal) policies, incompetent administration, and intentional lies.

“Nice folks” working for the Government these days!

PWS

11-17-18

HUFFPOST: HOW THE TRUMP-FOX CYCLE OF LIES, HATE, BIGOTRY, & RACISM IS DESTROYING AMERICA!

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-caravan-fox-and-friends_us_5bd768c4e4b017e5bfd4c948?p9

Matt Gertz writes in HuffPost:

The role of President Donald Trump’s ominous warnings about the caravan of migrants headed toward the U.S. border from Central America in inspiring the virulent anti-Semite who killed 11 people at a Pittsburgh synagogue on Saturday highlights the destructive consequences of Fox News’ grip on the president.

While Robert D. Bowers, the man accused of carrying out the mass shooting, had criticized Trump for being insufficiently anti-Semitic, critics pointed out that president had “stoked the fears of the Bowerses among us,” deploying incendiary and false rhetoric about the migrant caravan in hopes of bolstering the Republican Party’s standing. “The shooter might have found a different reason to act on a different day,” Adam Serwer wrote for The Atlantic. “But he chose to act on Saturday, and he apparently chose to act in response to a political fiction that the president himself chose to spread and that his followers chose to amplify.”

Trump, in turn, came into contact with that fiction via Fox’s fearmongering. The president’s first public statements about the caravan came in response to a segment he watched on the Fox News morning show ”Fox & Friends,” and in the weeks that followed, his rhetoric and that of the conservative network escalated at pace.

For more than a year, I’ve been studying the Trump-Fox feedback loop, my term for the way Fox News at times is able to set the national media agenda because the president watches the network’s programming, tweets about it in real time and adopts its particular fixations. As the rest of the press scrambles to cover Trump’s comments, Fox’s right-wing obsessions consume the news cycle, whether or not they were originally newsworthy. In this case, Fox News urged him to whip his followers into a frenzy over the caravan, and he did it. There’s no indication that either Fox News or Donald Trump will cut off this campaign of fear.

The caravan formed in Honduras on Friday, Oct. 12. By Oct. 15, it was already receiving substantial coverage on Fox News. The next morning, in response to a report on ”Fox & Friends,” Trump issued his first public statement on the migrants, warning the Honduran government that he would cut its aid if the caravan was not stopped. Trump’s comment generated more coverage both on Fox News and at other media outlets. On Wednesday night, Oct. 17, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich appeared on Fox News and urged Republicans to make the caravan a key voting issue, claiming that “the left is eager” for the caravan to enter the United States.

The next morning, “Fox & Friends” repeatedly aired Gingrich’s comments and suggested that Republicans should take his advice. In response, Trump issued a series of tweets using the caravan’s advance to attack Democrats, saying they had “led (because they want Open Borders and existing weak laws)” an “assault on our country.”

The network and its most powerful viewer spent the next week raising the temperature, stoking fears about whether the migrants were criminals or terrorists, calling the caravan an “invasion” and describing its approach as a national emergency. Escalation bred response bred further escalation, with no sign of a line beyond which the president and his propagandists wouldn’t go.

Trump’s Fox-fueled commentary turned the caravan story into a major national news story as reporters sought to explain and contextualize what he was talking about. But the situation does not, on its face, justify the coverage the caravan has received. The migrants are currently in southern Mexico, their numbers are dwindling and, depending on which route the caravan chooses, they face a journey of 1,000 to 2,000 miles to the U.S. border that will take weeks or months. Those who make it to the border have the right to seek asylum, and those whose claims are rejected will be turned away. That’s what happened when a similar caravan ― which also drew vitriol from Fox News and then from Trump ― reached the U.S. border in May. The caravans have been going on for roughly a decade without issue. There is no crisis except for the one that Fox News and Trump have sought to create in order to get GOP voters to the polls.

I’ve written before of the perils of having a president who relies on conservative cable news hosts to help him understand current events. When federal policy and personnel shifts can be driven by a Fox-inspired presidential whim, the network’s influence is staggering. The greatest risk is that Trump could use his unilateral control of the U.S. nuclear arsenal in response to a Fox segment; Trump was reportedly unnerved by b-roll the network aired in March 2017 of a North Korean missile launch, convinced that it was happening live. But on a day-to-day basis, the major concern is that the president is a demagogue who constantly lashes out at his perceived enemies in order to secure his base’s support, and Fox News’ programming is providing him with targets for his ire, whether that’s protesting NFL players or recalcitrant Justice Department officials. That pattern has played out again and again since Trump ascended to the presidency.

“Ordinarily,” Serwer wrote, “a politician cannot be held responsible for the actions of a deranged follower.” So, too, it usually doesn’t make sense to attribute a president’s actions to a news network. But Trump is suggestible, he watches Fox News constantly, and the network’s commentators are aware of that. In lighter moments, the “Fox & Friends” hosts joke about the president’s tendency to watch the programs. In heavier ones, the program’s commentators openly offer him advice, telling him not to sit down with special counsel Robert Mueller or pull troops out of Syria.

But on the Monday after the synagogue murders, nothing had changed. The migrants were again drawing coverage on “Fox & Friends” (“Border Battle Rages as Caravan Heads to U.S.,” read one chyron). And hours later, Trump tweeted that the migrants were conducting “an invasion of our Country.”

******************************************

Thanks to Trump, the GOP, and their myriad of lies, distortions, false narratives, and hate rhetoric, our democracy is on the ropes. If we don’t start voting these misguided folks out of office, on all levels, we wont have any country left.

PWS

10-30-18

DREAMERS: THE UGLY TRUTH COMES OUT — ADMINISTRATION UNLEASHES AN ALL-OUT XENOPHOBIC, WHITE NATIONALIST, “GONZO” “FACT-FREE” ATTACK ON DREAMERS, IMMIGRANTS, AND AMERICA’S FUTURE IN A DESPERATE ATTEMPT TO UNDERMINE BIPARTISAN IMMIGRATION REFORM! – Tal @ CNN Reports!

“White House goes all out to stop bipartisan immigration deal

By Tal Kopan, CNN

The Trump administration is working Thursday to kill a bipartisan deal on immigration that could be the best chance to get a bill through the Senate.

The White House is “actively considering issuing a veto threat” against the bipartisan immigration bill Thursday morning, a senior administration official said.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions derided the legislation in remarks to a national sheriff’s association.

“This is open borders and mass amnesty and the opposite of what the American people support,” Sessions claimed about the bill, according to prepared remarks. “This amendment — plain as day — will invite a mad rush of illegality across our borders.”

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen is also making calls to lawmakers to urge them to reject the bill, or potentially even revoke their sponsorship of it, according to an administration official.

And in a statement released late Wednesday night, the Department of Homeland Security had tough words for the plan, calling it “the end of immigration enforcement in America.”

The legislation from a group of 16 bipartisan senators would offer nearly 2 million young undocumented immigrants who came to the US as children before 2012 a path to citizenship over 10 to 12 years.

The plan would also place $25 billion in a guarded trust for border security, would cut a small number of green cards each year for adult children of current green card holders, and would prevent parents from being sponsored for citizenship by their US citizen children if that child gained citizenship through the pathway created in the bill or if they brought the child to the US illegally.

The administration statements riled up co-sponsors of the bill, who said the White House and allies have “lost credibility” by criticizing a bipartisan agreement.

“With their press release this morning, it seems as if DHS is intent on acting less like a partner and more like an adversary,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina. “Instead of offering thoughts and advice — or even constructive criticism — they are acting more like a political organization intent on poisoning the well. From the tone of this morning’s document, it appears as if DHS hopes all border security proposals fail. That would be the worst outcome of all.”

One provision the Department of Homeland Security particularly objected to would direct it to focus its arrests and deportations on criminals and newly arrived immigrants. The Trump administration has virtually removed all prioritization of arresting and deporting immigrants. It has targeted individuals with final deportation orders, some years and decades old, drawing criticism for deporting longtime members of communities with US citizen families.

“The Schumer-Rounds-Collins proposal destroys the ability of the men and women from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to remove millions of illegal aliens,” DHS said in a statement. “It would be the end of immigration enforcement in America and only serve to draw millions more illegal aliens with no way to remove them.

“The changes proposed by Senators Schumer-Rounds-Collins would effectively make the United States a Sanctuary Nation where ignoring the rule of law is encouraged,” the agency added.

President Donald Trump has backed a plan to give 1.8 million undocumented people who came to the US as children citizenship with $25 billion in border security, host of hardline enforcement power requests, substantially cutting family-based migration and ending the diversity visa lottery.

DHS called the bipartisan proposal an “egregious violation” of what the President has wanted.

The White House proposal has been introduced by Republican senators and is expected to be well below the 60 votes needed to advance.

Both proposals are expected to get a vote in the Senate on Thursday.”

************************************

Hang tough, Dems! Don’t sell out to outrageous lies, racism, and xenophobia!

PWS

02-15-18

“QUEEN OF DISINGENUOUS NONSENSE” SARAH HUCKABEE SANDERS WAS AT A LOSS FOR WORDS – WHILE SOME MIGHT WELL VIEW THAT AS A GOOD THING FOR AMERICA, DANA MILBANK @ WASHPOST HELPS HER OUT! — “I used the time waiting in vain for Wednesday’s briefing to compile the following executive summary of l’affaire Porter, in Trump administration officials’ own words . . . .”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/sarah-huckabee-sanders-is-at-a-loss-for-words-on-rob-porter-i-am-here-for-her/2018/02/14/0a019a22-11e2-11e8-9065-e55346f6de81_story.html

Milbank writes:

“Are you having trouble keeping up with the Rob Porter scandal? Apparently Sarah Huckabee Sanders is.

Her daily press briefing Wednesday was scheduled for 1 p.m., then at 2 p.m. was postponed until 4 p.m., then at 4 p.m. was abandoned entirely. The menu of topics — scandals at the EPA and VA, confirmation of a payoff to porn actress Stormy Daniels and, by midafternoon, another horrendous school shooting — was hardly appetizing. And the unpalatable entree was sure to be Porter, the White House staff secretary who resigned last week amid accusations of wife-beating that were ignored by the White House for months.

After eight days of the administration’s shifting and contradictory explanations of its handling of Porter, it’s quite understandable that Sanders would be at a loss for words. But I am here for her. As a public service, I used the time waiting in vain for Wednesday’s briefing to compile the following executive summary of l’affaire Porter, in Trump administration officials’ own words:

White House officials “are all processing the shocking and troubling allegations made against” Porter, which is why they “hope he has a wonderful career and hopefully he will have a great career ahead of him.”

Columnist Ruth Marcus says White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly is as much of a disgrace as the former staff secretary whose spousal abuse Kelly covered up.

Porter “says he’s innocent and I think you have to remember that. He said very strongly yesterday that he’s innocent,” which explains why “it became apparent to us that the allegations were true.”

Porter “is someone of the highest integrity and exemplary character” and is the victim of “a coordinated smear campaign.” As a result, there is “no reason not to believe the women” who accused him, and his “resignation was appropriate.”

Resignation “was a personal decision that Rob made and one that he was not pressured to do, but one that he made on his own.” Furthermore, “we dismissed that person immediately.”

There were “contemporaneous police reports,” “women speaking to the FBI under threat of perjury” and “photographs” corroborating accusations of wife beating. Consequently, “we absolutely wish him well.”

The White House “learned of the extent of the situation involving Rob Porter last Tuesday evening,” as a result of Porter himself telling the White House counsel of the situation in January 2017.

As of Sunday, the White House “had not received a final investigation” of Porter’s background because “the FBI has the ongoing investigations” had “not completed that investigation,” which is only logical given that the FBI gave the White House “a completed background investigation” in July and “closed the file” last month.

Kelly learned the details of Porter’s situation only “40 minutes before he threw him out,” last week, several months after Kelly reportedly was informed that allegations of spousal abuse were holding up Porter’s security clearance.

Once White House officials learned of the Porter allegations, “within 24 hours his resignation had been accepted and announced,” which is why the White House security office informed high-level White House officials about the allegations in November and Porter resigned in February.

The president has “absolute confidence in Gen. Kelly,” who is “an American hero” and also a “big fat liar.”

The “White House personnel security office,” which received the FBI’s background report on Porter, is part of “a process that doesn’t operate within the White House.”

The president is “totally opposed to domestic violence of any kind,” while “people’s lives are being shattered and destroyed by a mere allegation.” Domestic violence “is abhorrent and has no place in our society,” and “there is no recovery for someone falsely accused.” The White House takes “matters of domestic violence very seriously,” and “the president is shaped by a lot of false accusations against him” and wonders, “Is there no such thing any longer as Due Process?”

When you think about the Porter affair this way, it all begins to make perfect sense. Yes, the matter is “shocking,” and the White House “could have done better.” And at the same time, “what happened this week was completely reasonable and normal.”

In the Trump White House, this juxtaposition of “shocking” and “normal” somehow doesn’t feel like an oxymoron.”

**********************************

Trump and his “toady/sycophant/enablers are “normalizing” lies and misinformation.

The Trump Administrator is the biggest threat to our democracy and our national security. Will enough folks wake up to the threat before it’s too late?

PWS

02-15-18

THE MAN WHO WOULD BE BURGER KING! — SO MANY LIES, SO LITTLE TIME! — TRUMP: “More Whoppers Than Burger King At Lunchtime!”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2017/12/29/in-a-30-minute-interview-president-trump-made-24-false-or-misleading-claims/

 

 

 

Glenn Kessler reports for the Washington Post’s Fact Checker:”

“President Trump gave an impromptu half-hour interview with the New York Times on Dec. 28. We combed through the transcript and here’s a quick roundup of the false, misleading or dubious claims that he made, at a rate of one every 75 seconds. (Some of the interview was off the record, so it’s possible the rate of false claims per minute is higher.)

“Virtually every Democrat has said there is no collusion. There is no collusion. . . . I saw Dianne Feinstein the other day on television saying there is no collusion.”

Trump appears to be referring to an interview with Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee. She did not flatly say there was no collusion and instead was more nuanced. Asked by CNN’s Jake Tapper on Nov. 5 whether she had “seen any evidence that this dirt, these emails, were ever given to the Trump campaign,” she replied: “Not so far.” Tapper then asked: “Have you seen any communications that suggested that the Trump campaign wanted them to release them through a different means?” She answered: “I have not.”

“I think it’s been proven that there is no collusion.”

Trump is entitled to his own opinion, but he sidesteps the fact that the investigation has revealed that members of the Trump campaign interacted with Russians at least 31 times throughout the campaign. There are at least 19 known meetings, in addition to the indictments or guilty pleas of his campaign manager, national security adviser and others. Here’s The Fact Checker’s video on our count.

3:09
All the times members of the Trump campaign interacted with Russians

The Trump campaign and the White House have said there was no contact between anyone on their staff and Russia. This isn’t true. (Meg Kelly/The Washington Post)
“There was collusion with the Russians and the Democrats. A lot of collusion. . . . Starting with the dossier. But going into so many other elements. And Podesta’s firm.”

Trump has falsely accused Clinton campaign manager John Podesta of being involved with a Russian company. Tony Podesta co-founded the Podesta Group, a lobbying firm, with his brother John. But it’s a U.S.-based company, not a company in Russia. Trump likely is referring to the Podesta Group being paid $170,000 over six months to represent Sberbank, a Russian bank. The Podesta Group said its work for Sberbank USA was “never about getting sanctions lifted,” and “was simply about helping to clarify to what extent our client, the U.S. subsidiary [of Sberbank], was subject to sanctions. We confirmed they were not.” As for alleged collusion between the Democrats and Russia, Trump is referring to the fact that Fusion GPS, the political research firm that assembled the dossier as part of an assignment for Democrats, relied on a British intelligence agent who used Russian sources for his research. So that’s a rather big stretch.

Here’s the Fact Checker’s video on the Fusion GPS Russian connections.

3:28
What you need to know about Fusion GPS, the Trump dossier and Russian interests

How is Fusion GPS connected to the Trump dossier, Donald Trump Jr.’s Trump Tower meeting and the 2016 election? The Fact Checker explains. (Video: Meg Kelly/Photo: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
“I won because I campaigned properly and she didn’t. She campaigned for the popular vote. I campaigned for the electoral college.”

There is no evidence that Hillary Clinton campaigned for the popular vote, which Trump previously has said he would have won if not for fraud. Clinton campaigned in many battleground states, including Republican-leaning ones where she thought she had a chance. She did not campaign as much in two states — Michigan and Wisconsin — that were considered locks for Democrats but which Trump narrowly won. Clinton won the popular vote by nearly 3 million. If 40,000 votes had switched in three states, Trump would have also lost the electoral college.

“Paul [Manafort] only worked for me for a few months.”

Trump skips over lightly the fact that Manafort, now under indictment, was his campaign manager in the critical period in which he secured the nomination and accepted it at the GOP convention.

“There was tremendous collusion on behalf of the Russians and the Democrats. There was no collusion with respect to my campaign.”

This is a breathtakingly false statement. Little evidence has emerged of any collusion between the Democrats and Russia, whereas evidence has emerged of many contacts between Trump campaign officials and Russian-linked individuals. The FBI, CIA and National Security Agency earlier this year concluded that Russian President Vladimir Putin and his government “aspired to help President-elect Trump’s election chances when possible by discrediting Secretary Clinton and publicly contrasting her unfavorably to him.” The New York Times reported on Dec. 30 that the FBI investigation began because a Trump campaign aide told an Australian diplomat in May 2016 that the Russians had access to emails that would embarrass Clinton, well before research in the “dossier” was started. The Australian government then notified the U.S. government about the conversation.

“What I’ve done is, I have absolute right to do what I want to do with the Justice Department.”

Presidents do not have unfettered right to interfere with Justice Department investigations, unless they are actively seeking a constitutional crisis.

“I’m the one that saved coal. I’m the one that created jobs. You know West Virginia is doing fantastically now.”

West Virginia’s gross domestic product increased 3 percent in the first quarter of 2017. The recent bump is due in part to the increased price of metallurgic coal, which is used to make steel, and a price increase in natural gas exports. West Virginia produces roughly 5 percent of the natural gas in the U.S. and as the price of natural gas rises, the demand for coal increases, spurring growth in the state. Trump can’t take credit for the change in prices, which fluctuate with market forces. He previously earned Four Pinocchios for this claim, but he keeps saying it. As for “saving coal,” there has barely been any job growth in the coal industry since Trump became president. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, only 900 jobs have been created in the coal industry since Trump became president — an increase of less than 3 percent.

“There is tremendous collusion with the Russians and with the Democratic Party. Including all of the stuff with the — and then whatever happened to the Pakistani guy, that had the two, you know, whatever happened to this Pakistani guy who worked with the DNC?”

Trump echoes a conspiracy theory that a criminal case involving a Pakistani information technology specialist who worked for Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz — who had chaired the Democratic National Committee — was somehow related to the Russian hack of DNC emails. The case involves a fraudulent loan, and no evidence has emerged to connect it to the Russia investigation.

“They made the Russian story up as a hoax, as a ruse, as an excuse for losing an election that in theory Democrats should always win with the electoral college. The electoral college is so much better suited to the Democrats.”

Trump is falsely labeling nonpartisan investigations as made up by Democrats. The CIA concluded in 2016 that Russia intervened in the U.S. presidential election to help elect Trump, an assessment backed up by FBI Director James B. Comey and then-Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. As we noted, the intelligence community released a declassified report expressing “high confidence” in this judgment. Senate and House committees led by Republicans have begun their own investigations, and a special prosecutor has been appointed. Meanwhile, Democrats obviously do not have an electoral college lock. According to a tally by John Pitney of Claremont McKenna College, every Republican president since Rutherford B. Hayes in 1876 won a larger share of the electoral college votes than Trump, with the exception of George W. Bush (twice) and Richard Nixon in 1968.

“I was for Strange, and I brought Strange up 20 points. Just so you understand. When I endorsed him, he was in fifth place. He went way up. Almost 20 points.”

Polls indicate that Trump’s endorsement made little difference in the Alabama senate race — and in fact Luther Strange lost to Roy Moore by a greater margin than polls suggested at the time of Trump’s endorsement. While Trump says Strange was in fifth place, there were only three candidates in the GOP primary.

“I endorsed him [Alabama senate candidate Roy Moore]. It became a much closer race because of my endorsement. People don’t say that. They say, ‘Oh, Donald Trump lost.’ I didn’t lose, I brought him up a lot.”

Polls can vary, but there is little evidence this is the case. The fact remains that Moore lost an election in a state where Democrats usually lose by double digits.

“We have spent, as of about a month ago, $7 trillion in the Middle East. And the Middle East is worse than it was 17 years ago. … $7 trillion.”

Trump, who previously would cite a number of $6 trillion, is lumping together the wars in Iraq (in the Middle East) and Afghanistan (in Central or South Asia), which together cost about $1.6 trillion from 2001 to 2014. He is also adding in estimates of future spending, such as interest on the debt and veterans’ care for the next three decades.

“By the way, and for that, we’ve ended across state lines. So we have competition. You know for that I’m allowed to [inaudible] state lines. So that’s all done.”

Trump signed an executive order encouraging the formation of health plans across state lines. But there is still a law in place that exempts insurance companies from aspects of federal antitrust law and ensures that individual states remained the primary regulators of insurance. We wrote about this before, when Vice President Pence earned Four Pinocchios for a false claim.

“I know the details of taxes better than anybody. Better than the greatest C.P.A. I know the details of health care better than most, better than most.”

Lawmakers who dealt with Trump on taxes and especially health care privately told reporters they were shocked how little he knew about these issues.

“We’ve created associations, millions of people are joining associations. Millions. That were formerly in Obamacare or didn’t have insurance. Or didn’t have health care. Millions of people.”

Trump is referring to an executive order, mentioned above, but it has no force in law on its own and no one has yet joined these associations. The rules spelling out how the executive order would work have not been issued yet, so Trump is simply making up his “millions” number.

“Now that the individual mandate is officially killed, people have no idea how big a deal that was. It’s the most unpopular part of Obamacare. But now, Obamacare is essentially … You know, you saw this. … It’s basically dead over a period of time.”

While the individual mandate was an important incentive for Americans to seek health insurance, it was only one part of a far-reaching law that remains intact. The repeal does not take effect until 2019, and enrollment in Obamacare has remained strong. The Congressional Budget Office says the marketplaces are expected to remain stable for years.

“We see the drugs pouring into the country, we need the wall.”

The wall will have virtually no effect on drugs coming into the country. According to reports by the Drug Enforcement Administration, the majority of drugs are smuggled through legal ports of entry or smuggled through underground tunnels. Trump previously earned Four Pinocchios for this claim, but he keeps saying it.

“They have a lottery in these countries. They take the worst people in the country, they put them into the lottery, then they have a handful of bad, worse ones, and they put them out. ‘Oh, these are the people the United States.’ … We’re going to get rid of the lottery.”

This is a gross misrepresentation of the diversity visa program. Individuals apply for the visa system, and must have at least a high school diploma or work in specific industries to be eligible for the program. As the term “lottery” implies, applicants are selected via a randomized computer drawing. The selected applicants undergo a background check before entering the country, and some applicants undergo an additional in-depth review if they are considered a security risk.”

*************************

Well, you get the picture. It just goes on and on. Get all the “whoppers” at the link. Having a congenital liar as our leader can’t come out well for the U.S.

Happy New Year!

PWS

12-31-17

 

 

 

 

 

THE LIARS ON THE HILL: Spurred By Trump’s Example, GOP Legislators and Politicos In Washington Have Taken Outright Lying And Knowingly Spreading False Narratives To A New Level

Dave Leonhardt writes in “Opinion Today” at the NYT:

“First, health care: Here’s a giveway about how bad the new Senate health care bill is: Bill Cassidy, one of its authors, keeps trying to sell it by telling untruths.
“The relatively new phenomenon of just ‘up is down’ lying about your bill’s impacts is jarring,” says Loren Adler of the USC-Brookings-Schaeffer Initiative on Health Policy.
Most egregiously, Cassidy is claiming that the bill would not ultimately deprive sick people of health insurance. That’s false, as NPR calmly explained when Cassidy said otherwise.
In fact, the bill — known as Graham-Cassidy — would free states to remove insurance protections for people with pre-existing conditions. Without those protections, insurers could price such people out of the market.

If you get cancer (or even have a family history of it) or your child is born with a birth defect — among many, many other health issues — you could find yourself unable to buy insurance. Without insurance, you could be denied crucial treatments. In a tangible way, Graham-Cassidy would harm millions of Americans.
Aviva Aron-Dine and Sarah Kliff have both written good explainers on this issue. As Kliff notes, “There is literally no analysis” to support Cassidy’s claim that the bill would expand the number of insured.
Jimmy Kimmel, the country’s most unexpected health wonk, has urged Cassidy to stop “jamming this horrible bill down our throats.”

Insurers came out against the bill yesterday, joining doctors, hospitals, AARP, patient advocates, multiple governors and others.
Meanwhile, Republican leaders are trying to win the vote of Lisa Murkowski — one of three Republican senators who voted against a previous Obamacare repeal bill, in July — by funneling money to Alaska.
In the least surprising development of all, President Trump is now repeating Cassidy’s falsehoods.
The last word on health care this morning goes to Nicholas Bagley of the University of Michigan. “Graham-Cassidy is a brazen effort to block any level of government, state or federal, from achieving near-universal coverage,” he writes. “That’s what the debate is about. Everything else is just noise.”

Read Leonhardt’s entire piece with working links to his sources and citations at this link:

https://www.nytimes.com/newsletters/2017/09/21/opinion-today?nlid=79213886

 

And Leonhardt is by no means the only one blowing the whistle on the GOP’s latest War on America. Among many others, the Washington Post’s “Fact Checker” awarded Senator Cassidy “Three Pinocchios” for his false claims about coverage:

“Regular readers of The Fact Checker know that the burden of proof falls on the person making the claim. Cassidy has provided little evidence to support his claim of more coverage, except that innovation would flourish and help bring down costs and expand coverage. That’s certainly possible, but it would be more plausible if his proposal did not slash funding to such an extent.

Kimmel’s claim that 30 million fewer Americans will have insurance may be a high-end estimate. But already, in 2019, CBO calculations suggest at least 15 million fewer Americans would have insurance once the individual and employer mandates are repealed. Much of that decline might be by choice, but Cassidy insists the gap will be filled and then exceeded in 10 years. Unlike Cassidy, no prominent health-care analyst is willing to venture a guess on coverage levels — but the consensus is that his funding formula makes his claim all but impossible to achieve.

Given the lack of coverage estimates by the CBO or other health-care experts, Cassidy’s claim does not quite rise to Four Pinocchios. But it certainly merits a Three.

Three Pinocchios”

Here’s a link to the complete analysis by the Post’s Glenn Kessler:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2017/09/21/sen-cassidys-rebuttal-to-jimmy-kimmel-more-people-will-have-coverage/

Wow! Three Pinocchios is getting into Trump, Sessions, Miller territory!

PWS

09-21-17

🤥 🤥🤥

 

 

 

NYT OP-ED: DAVID LEONHARDT: Web Of Lies!

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/03/20/opinion/all-the-presidents-lies.html?em_pos=small&emc=edit_ty_20170321&nl=opinion-today&nl_art=2&nlid=79213886&ref=headline&te=1&_r=0&referer=

Leonhardt writes:

“The ninth week of Donald Trump’s presidency began with the F.B.I. director calling him a liar.

The director, the very complicated James Comey, didn’t use the L-word in his congressional testimony Monday. Comey serves at the pleasure of the president, after all. But his meaning was clear as could be. Trump has repeatedly accused Barack Obama of wiretapping his phones, and Comey explained there is “no information that supports” the claim.

I’ve previously argued that not every untruth deserves to be branded with the L-word, because it implies intent and somebody can state an untruth without doing so knowingly. George W. Bush didn’t lie when he said Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, and Obama didn’t lie when he said people who liked their current health insurance could keep it. They made careless statements that proved false (and they deserved much of the criticism they got).

But the current president of the United States lies. He lies in ways that no American politician ever has before. He has lied about — among many other things — Obama’s birthplace, John F. Kennedy’s assassination, Sept. 11, the Iraq War, ISIS, NATO, military veterans, Mexican immigrants, Muslim immigrants, anti-Semitic attacks, the unemployment rate, the murder rate, the Electoral College, voter fraud and his groping of women.

He tells so many untruths that it’s time to leave behind the textual parsing over which are unwitting and which are deliberate — as well as the condescending notion that most of Trump’s supporters enjoy his lies.

Trump sets out to deceive people. As he has put it, “I play to people’s fantasies.”

Caveat emptor: When Donald Trump says something happened, it should not change anyone’s estimation of whether the event actually happened. Maybe it did, maybe it didn’t. His claim doesn’t change the odds.

Which brings us to Russia.”

*********************************

Read what Leonhardt has to say about Trump’s “Russia connection” and more in the full op ed at the above link.

PWS

03/21/17

 

WashPost Political Analysis: More Lies & Obfuscation From Stephen Miller — Like His Boss, Miller Makes It Up As He Goes Along — But, He Does (Inadvertently) Reveal The Real Reason For The Bogus “Fraudulent Voter” Offensive: Lower The Turnout Among Those Groups Of Citizens Who Normally Vote For Democrats!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2017/02/12/mixed-into-his-falsehoods-on-voter-fraud-stephen-miller-did-hit-on-one-truth/?hpid=hp_rhp-top-table-main_milleranalysis-135pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.34ef3ee8f935

Phillip Bump writes in the Washington Post:

“There’s a theory under which some people operate which holds that presidential advisers appear in the news media to provide insight into what the president is doing for the American people. Governance broadly, and the White House specifically, can be inscrutable to outsiders, but since our democracy depends on an informed populace, it has historically been important to shed as much light as possible on what’s happening. Politicians and their allies don’t always like to shed that light, but they’ve generally acquiesced to participating in the effort.

On ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday, President Trump’s adviser Stephen Miller wasn’t interested in shedding light on reality. If anything, he was running around turning lights off. Inadvertently, though, he did offer one bit of insight into what’s happening at the White House.

. . . .

Three claims here. First, that there are millions of people who are registered in multiple states. Second, that dead people are still registered. Both of those things are true. (Among those registered to vote in two places, by the way, are Trump’s son-in-law, treasury nominee, daughter and press secretary.) But that’s not voter fraud. It’s a sloppy registration system — and indifference from people whose first instincts when relatives die is not to ensure that the registrar of voters is informed.

The third claim is that 14 percent of noncitizens are registered to vote, which is based on an academic analysis released several years ago. It has been subsequently shown to be problematic. [In fact, it earned the coveted “Four Pinocchio Award” from the Post’s “Fact Checker” https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/10/24/no-eric-trump-14-percent-of-noncitizens-are-not-registered-to-vote/?tid=a_inl&utm_term=.3c0bdd64fa0c ] As anyone paying attention to the issue should know.

. . . .

Kobach is the secretary of state in Kansas, in charge of the state’s electoral process. He has held that position since 2011, the year the state passed new restrictions on voting in the name of preventing fraud.

The net effect? A report from the Government Accountability Office determined that turnout fell by several percentage points in the 2012 election relative to comparable states. And the populations that saw the biggest drops in turnout?
Young people, newly registered voters and black people. Populations that tend to vote more heavily Democratic.

That’s almost certainly the point. Miller was trying to mislead people with his false arguments about voter fraud. But he ended up offering some insight after all.”

***************************

Miller and Steve Bannon are among the remarkably unqualified guys that are pulling the strings from the Trump White House.

PWS

02/12/17