With President Trump acting increasingly like former President Nixon during the Watergate scandal coverup, there is one similarity between the two scandals that is not receiving the media attention it deserves.

During the Watergate scandal, Nixon had a taping system installed in the Oval Office, recording conversations he had there. These tapes revealed wrongdoing with recorded proof beyond all reasonable doubt.

During the Russia scandal that plagues the Trump presidency, there are also large numbers of recorded conversations that provide the equivalent of the Watergates tapes. I call them "Trump tapes", which were legally recorded by counter-intelligence and law enforcement authorities for legitimate security and law enforcement purposes.

The eavesdropping that created these tapes was originally aimed against foreign individuals with interests that are are hostile to America, including Russian targets. The tapes would include every mention by foreign intelligence targets of every individual associated with Trump with whom they spoke.

Donald Trump probably decreased his odds of surviving his Russia scandal today when he abruptly fired FBI Director James Comey, in what felt like a panic move out of desperation. Now that details are emerging regarding the circumstances leading up to Comey’s firing, it turns out Trump had become totally unhinged about the Russia investigation, to the point of simply screaming at the television whenever it came on.

That’s perhaps the most salient detail from a lengthy new piece from Politico, which has one White House aide claiming that Trump would “scream at television clips” that involved his Russia scandal (link). This helps to confirm the context in which Trump ultimately pulled the trigger on Comey: he simply couldn’t stand hearing about his Russia scandal anymore, and he somehow convinced himself that if he fired Comey, it would all magically go away.

This dovetails with Tuesday night’s on-air report during the Brian Williams show on MSNBC, which said that White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer was shocked at the widespread negative reaction to James Comey’s firing. It’s not that Spicer truly feels that way, of course, but rather that Spicer is attempting to speak for how Donald Trump views the matter.

My guess is Trump figured that the Democrats and his detractors would be fine with Comey being fired, because they already blame him for stealing the election from Hillary Clinton; he was too naive to realize that most of those same people have now been rooting for Comey to get to the bottom of Trump-Russia, no matter what they thought of Comey personally. So now that Comey’s firing has had the opposite effect from what Trump expected, and the Russia scandal is about to occupy even more of the cable news time that Trump simply can’t stop watching, you can expect him to have even more of a breakdown over it.

Claude Taylor? @TrueFactsStated 23m23 minutes ago

A source with knowledge of the investigation tells me the FBI has targeted from 28 up to 42 individuals. Watch @KeithOlbermann tomorrow AM

FBI is targeting at least twenty-eight individuals in Donald Trump’s Russia scandal

Reports for the past few weeks have painted the federal investigation into Donald Trump’s Russia scandal as have a far wider reach than previously believed, with one RICO case involving a number of targets, and one FARA case involving a far larger number of targets (link). Now come the numbers: a total of at least twenty-eight individuals have been targeted by the FBI in these investigations.

That information comes by way of Democratic insider Claude Taylor, who was the first to report on the grand juries already in progress, which was later confirmed by Republican insider Rick Wilson. Taylor is now revealing that “A source with knowledge of the investigation tells me the FBI has targeted from 28 up to 42 individuals” (link). This represents an eye popping number which clearly goes well beyond the four or five Donald Trump campaign advisers who have been widely reported to be under FBI investigation. So how can there possibly be so many targets of the investigation?

RICO cases usually involve money laundering and/or organized crime, meaning that any number of Donald Trump’s political and business associates could be wrapped up in it. There have long been stories of Trump’s Russian business associates living in Trump Tower, for instance. The FARA case centers around the Foreign Agent Registration Act, and ostensibly targets U.S. citizens who knowingly took money from foreign government sources without reporting it.

The FARA case is supposed to be the larger of the two, perhaps suggesting that a far larger number of Trump’s campaign advisers took Russian government money, or that Republican politicians outside Trump’s campaign may have taken Russian government money. In any case Taylor says to watch Keith Olbermann’s online video broadcast on Friday morning for further details on the twenty-eight or more FBI targets in the Trump-Russia scandal.
https://www.palmerreport.com/opinion/28-fbi-donald-trump-russia/2594/

Louise Mensch?Verified account @LouiseMensch 46m46 minutes ago

Trump will be gone, Team Treason will be gone, Putin will be punished, America will triumph, I'm totally relaxed about it all.
Thanks #USIC

Louise Mensch?Verified account @LouiseMensch 45m45 minutes ago

More bad news Team Trump - did you wash any Russian money in a bank with a branch in New York?
@AGSchneiderman has you by the cojones.

Louise Mensch?Verified account @LouiseMensch 47m47 minutes ago

Bad news Team Trump - FBI wuz all up in ur servers reading all ur packet data and yr iodine xfer messaging

Call your lawyers

If you’ve been following the saga of Jason Chaffetz over the past two weeks and you find yourself confused, rest assured that Chaffetz is even more confused than you are. He’s gone from announcing he won’t run again and suggesting he won’t finish his term, to claiming he’s seeking a job in the private sector, to announcing a month long leave of absence for foot surgery, to now suddenly running (or should we say limping) right back to Washington DC.

The latest development comes by way of NBC News Capitol Hill Producer Alex Moe, who just confirmed that Jason Chaffetz will in fact be back in Washington DC tomorrow (link). This comes just four days after his foot surgery, which he claimed would keep him out of action for as long as four weeks. Moe believes that Chaffetz may be returning to try to help with the latest flailing House Republican effort to repeal ObamaCare. But based on what’s transpired to this point, there’s a lot more going on here with him behind the scenes.

The week before Jason Chaffetz announced out of nowhere that he won’t be seeking reelection, there was already intel community buzz that Russia was blackmailing him into protecting Donald Trump, and that the FBI was onto it; Palmer Report documented it here, here and here. Then when he made the announcement that he won’t be seeking reelection, he insisted that he was in perfect health. But after just one day of leading the House Oversight Committee’s Trump-Russia investigation, he suddenly announced that he immediately needed foot surgery on a twelve year old injury, and that he would be gone from Congress for around a month.

And now suddenly Chaffetz is on a plane back to Washington DC. By all accounts he did have the surgery. But why did he announce that he would need to take a leave of absence for a month, if it was the kind of surgery where he’d be sufficiently recovered to fly across country four days later? That suggests this was minor surgery and he knew it, and he was using it as an excuse to bail from Congress for a month. But whatever is causing him to make one panic move after another, it’s caused him to suddenly decide he needs to be immediately right back in Congress after all. Something is way, way off with the entire Chaffetz saga, and it’s time the major media outlets begin treating it with the proper level of skepticism.

The world’s most patriotic American hacker, the Jester, gives first ever radio interview

FBI agents call him the Batman of the internet. He hacked ISIS after Charlie Hebdo and posted pictures of Muhammad. He just recently hacked the Russian Foreign Ministry. His laptop is in the spy museum in D.C.

He’s the Jester and he joined the show last week.

Why Conservatives need to get better at direct action

He said it took him about 20 seconds to hack into the Russian Foreign Ministry website. No damage was done but it was designed to ruffle their feathers and to send a message to them to stay out of our Democratic process.

The Jester also says there is a big connection between WikiLeaks and Russia. He says Snowden may not be a Russian agent but he is a useful idiot and a giant narcissist. The Jester thinks Russia keeps the juicy stuff for themselves and gives WikiLeaks the scraps.

During their “very friendly conversation,” the administration said in a late-night statement, Mr. Trump invited Mr. Duterte, an authoritarian leader accused of ordering extrajudicial killings of drug suspects in the Philippines, to visit him at the White House.

Now, administration officials are bracing for an avalanche of criticism from human rights groups. Two officials said they expected the State Department and the National Security Council, both of which were caught off guard by the invitation, to raise objections internally.

The White House disclosed the news on a day when Mr. Trump whipped up ardent backers at a campaign-style rally in Harrisburg, Pa. The timing of the announcement — after a speech that was an angry, grievance-filled jeremiad — encapsulated this president after 100 days in office: still ready to say and do things that leave people, even on his staff, slack-jawed.

“By essentially endorsing Duterte’s murderous war on drugs, Trump is now morally complicit in future killings,” said John Sifton, the Asia director of Human Rights Watch. “Although the traits of his personality likely make it impossible, Trump should be ashamed of himself.”

“Preexisting [conditions] is going to be [in the Obamacare replacement bill and we’re also going to create [high risk] pools and pools are going to take care of the preexisting [conditions].”

As Dickerson pressed for details, Trump began to get annoyed.
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“Look, if you hurt your knee, honestly, I’d rather have the federal government focus on North Korea, focus on other things than your knee or than your back, as important as your back is,” Trump declared. “I would much rather see the federal government focused on other things.”

Jonathan Tamari
✔
@JonathanTamari

Trump says "we have a lot of ppl standing outside" and he "broke the all time record" in this arena. There are rows of empty seats here

Advice for life in 2017: How to survive a nuclear blast

So this is where we are now, apparently. NBC News has dedicated more than 1,500 words to the subject of how to survive a North Korean nuclear attack. If you’re thinking “How to survive a nuclear attack?” and laughing bitterly, you’re not alone, but NBC’s James Rainey has assembled a parade of experts here to tell you to stay inside—preferably way inside—and not to try to escape.

“Stay inside for at least 24 hours after a nuclear bomb goes off” does not seem like advice anyone should need to be given, and yet you know that there would be at least a few people going “Well, it’s been an entire 18 hours so we should probably head outside to check things out.”

http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/4/26/1656410/-Advice-for-life-in-2017-How-to-survive-a-nuclear-blast