March 6, 2017

The Newest "Der Spiegel" Cover Takes Aim at Trump's Ties to Putin

by Lindsey Ellefson | 11:36 am, March 6th, 2017


Donald Trump has been batting away suggestions that he’s in cahoots with Vladimir Putin since he was campaigning for the presidency. Remember “no puppet,” one of the greatest lines of the debates? His insistence that he and Putin are not palling around has gotten feebler and feebler as members of his administration are outed, one by one by one, as having had communications with the Kremlin that they weren’t totally honest about.

This is serious stuff, sure, but there’s still room for humor. Think of Saturday Night Live and their Trump and Putin romance. The latest cover of always-political German publication Der Spiegel combines the funny with the serious:

https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/838738773026488320

There is Trump’s signature hair on top of Putin’s, well, signature face.

This is far from the first time Der Spiegel has gone after Trump in a less-than-subtle way. He’s been a speeding meteor on the way to Earth, a cause of flag combustion, and the decapitator of democracy. Now, he’s just Putin himself.

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http://www.mediaite.com/online/the-newest-der-spiegel-cover-takes-aim-at-trumps-ties-to-putin/

March 6, 2017

This Is Ridiculous - By Josh Marshall

By JOSH MARSHALL PublishedMARCH 6, 2017, 11:09 AM EDT

There are a few points worth making on the President's claim about former President Obama wiretapping him.

First, regardless of whether any of this sounds true and regardless of whether such a tap would require a judicial finding of probable cause against the target, there's a much bigger problem: Congressional investigations such as these are almost entirely a matter of Congress ferreting out and examining things that happened within the executive branch. To use a clumsy but helpful analogy, this kind investigation means having the folks in Congress's house find out what's in the President's house. But the President is in the President's house. He doesn't need to investigate. He knows. He's in the house! He owns the house!

Now, one might speculate that the executive branch is so vast and sprawling that the President somehow needs Congress to come in and figure out what's going on. But here the President has already kneecapped himself. Here's why.

The President says this happened. He says he has the evidence. He knows it happened. If he knows it happened, there's nothing to investigate. The President has plenary power to declassify and publicize anything he wants. Anything. He can do it by the book or he can do it basically by fiat with no one involved at all.

My best guess is that is a typically Trumpian development in that it involves both abject lying and a big splat of ignorance, laziness and ridiculousness of simply having no idea of how the different branches connect with each other. He hasn't realized that demanding a congressional investigation is different when you're President rather than some old guy getting angry watching Fox News in the living room. The President is in essence demanding Congress investigate him. Yes, he thinks it's Obama. But he inherited Obama's house. Whatever Obama did, Trump owns it.

more
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/this-is-ridiculous

March 6, 2017

Gowdy Says He Hasn't Seen Evidence Of Trump's Wild Wiretapping Claim

Source: Talking Points Memo



By CAITLIN MACNEAL Published MARCH 6, 2017, 11:21 AM EDT

Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC), who led the House's Benghazi investigation, told Fox News on Monday that he has not seen any evidence to back up President Donald Trump's unsubstantiated claim that Barack Obama ordered surveillance of Trump Tower during the 2016 campaign.

After Gowdy said he has not seen any evidence to support Trump's tweets on the matter, Fox News' Bill Hemmer noted that Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT), the House Oversight Chairman, said earlier on the network that the Obama administration had "been notorious on this type of stuff."

Hemmer asked Gowdy if he had anything to add to Chaffetz's comments, and in response the South Carolina Republican took the opposite tack. "I don’t view it as the Obama team," Gowdy said. "I don't think the FBI is the Obama team, and I don't think the men and women who are career prosecutors at DOJ belong to any team other than a blindfolded woman holding a set of scales."

"We have certain tools that this country needs to keep us safe, and it is great and wise and prudent and legal for those tools to be used lawfully and appropriately,” Gowdy continued. “If they're not used lawfully and appropriately, there is a paper trail and we'll be able to find it out.” He noted that Obama is not President any more.

“So any information that the current Department of Justice has that suggests the previous Department of Justice acted inappropriately, they are welcome to release it," Gowdy said.

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Read more: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/gowdy-no-evidence-obama-wiretap-trump

March 6, 2017

Trump Ally Proposes 'Purge' Of 'Leftists' From The Executive Branch

By MATT SHUHAM Published MARCH 6, 2017, 11:22 AM EDT

Conservative congressman and Trump ally Rep. Steve King (R-IA) urged the President on Sunday to “purge Leftists” from his administration before they “sink us.”

On his Twitter account, King made the recommendation while posting a story from Conservative Review’s Daniel Horowitz.

https://twitter.com/SteveKingIA/status/838556380176973825

In his article, Horowitz wrote that there had been “a silent coup within the intelligence agencies” against Trump, and he argued for a wholesale firing of political appointees who don’t “share the views of the president.”

“Any open borders official within DOJ and DHS should be gone,” he wrote. “Any pro-government-run health care supporter within HHS has to go. Any official within Treasury who is not on board with the OMB spending cuts and pro-growth tax cuts should go out and campaign for their cause … on the outside. Any State Department official who is a shill for refugee resettlement, a Palestinian State, the Muslim Brotherhood, or who opposes the president’s immigration moratorium must go.”

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http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/steve-king-purge-leftists

March 6, 2017

Conway On Wiretapping: Trump 'Has Information' That The Rest Of Us Don't

Source: Talking Points Memo


By MATT SHUHAM Published MARCH 6, 2017, 11:15 AM EDT

White House counselor Kellyanne Conway said Monday that Donald Trump may have claimed that his predecessor ordered wiretaps of his phones during the presidential campaign because the President receives "information and intelligence that the rest of us do not."

Conway was asked during an appearance on "Fox and Friends" how Trump knew that his phones had been tapped by President Barack Obama. Trump made the explosive, unsubstantiated claim in a series of tweets Saturday.

"Let me answer that globally," she said. "He is the President of the United States. He has information and intelligence that the rest of us do not. And that's the way it should be for Presidents."

Conway made similar comments Sunday night to Fox News' Jeanine Pirro that suggested Trump made the claim based on some unique intelligence.

Read more: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/conway-wiretapping-allegation-trump-has-info-we-dont

March 6, 2017

CBO: Obamacare Costing The Feds A Third Less Than Expected

Source: Talking Points Memo



By TIERNEY SNEED Published MARCH 6, 2017, 10:52 AM EDT


The Congressional Budget Office said Friday that its projections for the federal government's spending on the Affordable Care Act's coverage provisions in 2019 are now a third lower than what they were when the law was passed in 2010.

CBO Director Keith Hall said in written responses to questions posed by the House Budget Committee that the CBO expects the federal government to spend $148 billion in 2019 on the law's coverage provisions, down from the $214 billion estimated when the law was passed.

Hall cited a number of reasons for why the law is costing the federal government less than originally expected. One is that less people are using the individual market than anticipated, lowering the feds' spending on things like the subsidies for insurance premiums. Additionally, Medicare and Medicaid's costs are coming in under expectations, as are the costs of private insurance -- a slowdown in health care costs Hall speculated could have been driven by the recession.

"Although it is unclear how much of that slowdown is attributable to the recession and its aftermath and how much is attributable to other factors, the slower growth has been sufficiently broad and persistent to persuade the
agencies to significantly lower their projections of federal costs for health care," Hall said. The Supreme Court's decision in 2012 to make Medicaid expansion optional for states also "significantly reduced projected costs," Hall said.

Read more: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/cbo-third-obamacare-costs

March 6, 2017

The blame game: Reince Priebus is on the hot seat for West Wing chaos

MONDAY, MAR 6, 2017 08:35 AM EST

The blame game: Reince Priebus is on the hot seat for West Wing chaos

White house officials put blame on President Trump's chief of staff, according to a Politico report

TAYLOR LINK

Two months into President Donald Trump’s administration, staffers point to Reince Priebus, the White House chief of staff, as a person to shoulder the blame for the rough start. Over a dozen Trump aides and allies told Politico that Priebus was becoming the exclusive source of mishap in the West Wing.

Staffers describe Priebus as omnipresent, who forces himself in meetings, even the small ones he does not need to attend. From Politico’s Alex Isenstadt and Josh Dawsey:



Priebus is said to represent one of the two major power centers in the White House. A long-time GOP insider, Priebus has a working relationship with Republicans on the Hill and is close with Rep. Paul Ryan. But in the West Wing, the chief of staff seems to be competing with chief strategist Steve Bannon and top aide Stephen Miller, the architects of Trumpism, for influence over the president.

Bannon disputed the report when Politico asked for comment, saying that Priebus was doing a “great job.”

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http://www.salon.com/2017/03/06/the-blame-game-reince-priebus-is-on-the-hot-seat-for-west-wing-chaos/

March 6, 2017

Did Trump adviser Roger Stone admit to working with WikiLeaks while on the campaign?

MONDAY, MAR 6, 2017 08:52 AM EST

Despite his boss's unpleasant Twitter experiences, Stone hasn't learned much about discretion on the platform

MATTHEW ROZSA

President Donald Trump’s close adviser Roger Stone — better known as a notorious right-wing hatchet man and conspiracy theorist— doesn’t seem to have learned much from his boss’s own bad experiences with Twitter. If he had, he might have avoided his embarrassing weekend incident, one in which he may have admitted to colluding with Julian Assange to leak emails that damaged Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.

Stone took to Twitter to reiterate Trump’s false claim that President Barack Obama had wiretapped him, posting, “The buck stops here. Obama responsible for illegal surveillance of @realDonaldTrump – must be charged, convicted and jailed.” After that, he got into a heated exchange with a feminist professor Twitter user, whom he called a “stupid ignorant ugly bitch,” and later, a “stupid stupid bitch.”

-snip- (copies of the tweets)

During that exchange, Stone also bragged about having a “perfectly legal back channel to Assange.” It is unclear how any funneling of stolen emails could be legal, especially considering that Assange has well-established links to Russia and The New York Times has reported that Stone is “under scrutiny” for possible links to Russia. During the 2016 campaign, Assange leaked politically damaging emails about Hillary Clinton’s campaign that the intelligence community agrees were hacked by the Russian government in the hopes of helping electing Trump to the presidency.

Stone also picked a fight with acclaimed author J. K. Rowling, best known for the “Harry Potter” series, after she saw his exchange with Caroline O. and tweeted her dismay. Stone responded by taunting Rowling in a tweet. To date, that post remains on his profile.

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http://www.salon.com/2017/03/06/did-trump-adviser-roger-stone-admit-to-working-with-wikileaks-while-on-the-campaign/

March 6, 2017

'We're going broke': West Palm Beach business owners want Trump to spend weekends somewhere else

DAVID EDWARDS
05 MAR 2017 AT 15:00 ET

Residents and business owners in West Palm Beach complained over the weekend that President Donald Trump’s frequent trips to his Mar-a-Lago resort are making their lives miserable.

NBC News reported that Trump’s weekend visits were not only expensive for the taxpayers, but the safety measures implemented by the Secret Service are also costing local business owners big.

“We’re basically going broke,” a spokesperson for Southern Helicopter told NBC News. “We were not expecting him to come down almost every weekend.”

Jonathan Miller, the president of Stellar Aviation Group, worried that his business would go under if Trump continued to make Mar-a-Lago his weekend destination. Miller estimated that he is losing $30,000 each weekend because of Trump.

Additionally, the taxpayers of Palm Beach County are already on the hook for $1.7 million in extra security, and the White House has so far ignored requests to reimburse the county.

http://www.rawstory.com/2017/03/were-going-broke-west-palm-beach-business-owners-want-trump-to-spend-weekends-somewhere-else/

March 6, 2017

Wiretapping allegations accomplished what Trump wanted -- but may backfire bigly

By James Hohmann March 6 at 10:10 AM

THE BIG IDEA: It is easy to pooh-pooh Donald Trump’s predawn Saturday tweetstorm – accusing Barack Obama of the worst political crimes since Watergate while offering no evidence – as an undisciplined rant from someone who has long embraced conspiracy theories.

That neither gives the president enough credit nor reflects the gravity of his unfounded accusations.

It is past time to dispense with the fiction that Trump doesn’t know what he’s doing. He knows exactly what he’s doing. He is trying to distract us. And, at least this weekend, he succeeded.

-- The country’s chief law enforcement officer made a false statement to Congress, while under oath, about his contacts with one of this nation’s biggest adversaries. (Legal experts, including Republicans, note that others have been prosecuted for less.) When he got busted, the attorney general initially claimed through a spokeswoman that he couldn’t recall specifics of what had been said during his undisclosed sit-down with the Russian ambassador, except that it wasn’t political in nature. Then, with his job on the line, he miraculously remembered supposedly exculpatory details.

This is a big dang deal, no matter how hard Sessions tries to spin it. It’s such a big deal that, after weeks of refusing to do so and with the president publicly urging him not to, the AG agreed to recuse himself from any investigations related to the 2016 campaign.

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/daily-202/2017/03/06/daily-202-wiretapping-allegations-accomplished-what-trump-wanted-but-may-backfire-bigly/58bca8bde9b69b1406c75d42/?utm_term=.b57b3a4d0f40&wpisrc=nl_daily202&wpmm=1