Orange Meltdown, Trump's Triple Trouble Edition

Trump's former Secretary of Racism, Stephen Miller, spent hours on Tuesday testifying before the federal grand jury investigating Trump's role in the January 6th terrorist insurrection.

 

Former Trump adviser Stephen Miller testified on Tuesday to a federal grand jury in Washington, DC, as part of the January 6, 2021, investigation, CNN has learned, making him the first known witness to testify since the Justice Department appointed a special counsel to oversee the criminal investigations around the former president.

Miller was at the federal courthouse in downtown Washington for several hours throughout Tuesday, according to a person familiar with the investigation. January 6 lead prosecutor Thomas Windom was spotted at the same federal courthouse on Tuesday.

Windom is expected to join the newly created Special Counsel’s Office led by longtime public corruption prosecutor Jack Smith and will continue leading the investigation into former President Donald Trump’s role in efforts to impede the transfer of power following the 2020 election.

Federal investigators have for months sought information from Trump’s inner circle in the White House, attempting to gather insight into Trump’s state of mind before his supporters rioted on January 6.

Miller, a former White House speechwriter and senior adviser to Trump, could provide a firsthand account of the former president’s preparations for his speech at the Ellipse in Washington on January 6, including how he wanted to inspire his supporters, many of whom went on to attack the Capitol and disrupt Congress.

Miller was first subpoenaed in the federal criminal investigation months ago.

 

That's two major Trump players this week who have turned evidence against Trump, Miller yesterday to the grand jury investigating Trump, and former Trump Mouth of Sauron Kellyanne Conway on Monday to the House January 6th Committee.

Former Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway met for nearly five hours Monday with investigators on the House committee probing the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.

The committee did not publicly issue Conway a subpoena, and aides refused to comment on whether she was issued one privately. The panel declined to comment on her appearance Monday.


The closed-door meeting took place at the O’Neill House Office Building, where Conway was seen entering a conference room with attorney Emmet Flood, a lawyer in former President Donald Trump’s White House.

Conway spoke to the committee on the record, two sources familiar with her appearance said.

Speaking to reporters around 3 p.m. after the meeting ended, Conway said she did not invoke the Fifth Amendment at any point Monday.

Earlier, when Conway left the meeting room for a break, she told reporters, “I’m here voluntarily.” Asked by a reporter when she last spoke with Trump, Conway said he called her last week.

Conway worked as a senior counselor to Trump from the beginning of his term through August 2020. She decided to leave the administration because, she said, she needed to focus on her family. She also was a campaign manager for Trump's 2016 presidential bid.

Conway told reporters Monday that she is not working on Trump's 2024 campaign, and she refused to detail previous discussions with Trump about the 2020 election.

 

Oh but it gets even better, kids.

In South Carolina, former Trump WH Chief of Staff Mark Meadows lost his bid to block his Georgia subpoena compelling his testimony before Fulton County DA Fani Willis's grand jury on Trump's election interference case in that state.

The Supreme Court of South Carolina has ordered former Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows to testify before a special grand jury investigating efforts to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia.

“We have reviewed the arguments raised by Appellant and find them to be manifestly without merit,” the South Carolina Supreme Court justices wrote in their opinion.

The decision upholds a ruling by a lower court in South Carolina, where Meadows resides, which determined he was “material and necessary to the investigation.”

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is spearheading the special purpose grand jury investigation into attempts to manipulate Georgia’s 2020 election results. The probe was prompted by the infamous call between then-President Donald Trump and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, in which Trump requested that he “find” the nearly 12,000 votes that would secure his victory in the state. But the investigation has grown to include the fake electors plot, the presentations made by Trump allies to Georgia lawmakers that promoted bogus voter fraud claims and other Trump-world machinations from that period.

The Atlanta-area investigators, in demanding Meadows’ testimony, pointed to his involvement in the Trump-Raffensperger call and to a December 2020 White House meeting about election fraud claims that was touted by Meadows. Their filings also reference his visit to a site where an audit of Georgia’s election was underway and emails Meadows sent to Justice Department officials about unsubstantiated fraud allegations.

A spokesperson for Willis declined to comment.

An attorney and a spokesman for Meadows did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

 

You see, Meadows is scheduled to testify...today.

 

It's been a bad, bad 72 hours for Team Trump on three different fronts.

 

It's only going to get worse for him.

King Of The Grifters

The Trump regime corrupting Dr. King's memory for their own vile purposes happens yearly at this point, and I don't know why anyone expected anything different in 2020.

Kellyanne Conway on Monday responded to a question on how the president is observing Martin Luther King Day by claiming the civil-rights leader would oppose the impeachment of President Donald Trump.

During a press gathering at the White House, NBC News correspondent Geoff Bennett asked the senior Trump aide how the president was observing Martin Luther King Day, prompting Conway to first note that Trump was preparing for his trip to Davos before saying the president “agrees with many of the things that Dr. Martin Luther King stood for.”

From there, it only got more bizarre.

Adding that the president and Dr. King would see eye-to-eye on “unity and equality,” Conway complained that it’s not the president who is “trying to tear the country apart through an impeachment process and a lack of substance that really is very shameful at this point.”

“I’ve held my opinion on it for a very long time, but when you see the articles of impeachment that came out, I don’t think it was Dr. King’s vision to have Americans dragged through a process where the president is not going to be removed from office, is not being charged bribery, extortion, high crimes and misdemeanors,” she continued.

After declaring that anyone who cares for the phrase “and justice for all” should appreciate that the president has a “full-throttle defense” when it comes to impeachment, Conway concluded by linking herself with MLK.

“I, this morning, was reading some of the lesser-known passages by Dr. King and I appreciate the fact that we as a nation respect him by giving him his own day,” she proclaimed.

“I’m happy to share a birthday with this day,” Conway concluded.

I'm pretty sure Dr. King would tell Kellyanne Conway to shut the hell up.

Holidaze: The Village Idiot

Jay Rosen catches NBC Meet The Press host Chuck Todd trying to explain away his guilt in allowing the Trump regime's misinformation for three straight years on his weekly politics show, and if anything I agree with Rosen that Todd's admission should lead to his immediate replacement.

‘Round midnight on Christmas eve, Rolling Stone posted a short interview with Chuck Todd, host of “the longest running show on television,” NBC’s Meet the Press.
Its contents were explosive, embarrassing, enraging, and just plain weird.

Three years after Kellyanne Conway introduced the doctrine of “alternative facts” on his own program, a light went on for Chuck Todd. Republican strategy, he now realized, was to make stuff up, spread it on social media, repeat it in your answers to journalists — even when you know it’s a lie with crumbs of truth mixed in — and then convert whatever controversy arises into go-get-em points with the base, while pocketing for the party a juicy dividend: additional mistrust of the news media to help insulate President Trump among loyalists when his increasingly brazen actions are reported as news.

Todd repeatedly called himself naive for not recognizing the pattern, itself an astounding statement that cast doubt on his fitness for office as host of Meet the Press. While the theme of the interview was waking up to the truth of Republican actions in the information warfare space, Todd went to sleep on the implications of what he revealed. It took him three years to understand a fact about American politics that was there on the surface, unconcealed since the day after inauguration. Many, many interpreters had described it for him during those lost years when he could not bring himself to believe it. (I am one.)

You cannot call that an oversight. It’s a strategic blindness that he superintended. By “strategic blindness” I mean what people mean when they quote Upton Sinclair: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”

The ostensible purpose of the Rolling Stone interview was to promote a special edition of Meet the Press on December 29 that will focus on the weaponization of disinformation. But its effect is to bring MTP — and by extension similar shows — into epistemological crisis. With Todd’s confessions the mask has come off. It could have come off a long time ago, but the anchors, producers, guests, advertisers and to an unknown degree the remaining viewers colluded in an act of make believe that lurched along until now. One way to say it: They agreed to pretend that Conway’s threatening phrase, “alternative facts” was just hyberbole, the kind of inflammatory moment that makes for viral clips and partisan bickering. More silly than it was ominous.

In reality she had made a grave announcement. The nature of the Trump government would be propagandistic. And as as Garry Kasparov observes for us, “The point of modern propaganda isn’t only to misinform or push an agenda. It is to exhaust your critical thinking, to annihilate truth.” This exhaustion, this annihilation were on their way to the Sunday shows, and to all interactions with journalists. That is what Kellyanne Conway was saying that day on Meet the Press. But the people who run the show chose not to believe it.

That’s malpractice. Chuck Todd called it naiveté in order to minimize the error. This we cannot allow.

Todd is trying to escape his own culpability with his defense of "I'm a professional pundit and they were good enough to fool even me!"

For years I've been saying that the Village media, in its constant quest for "access" to the Trump regime, has all but destroyed itself in the process.  We no longer have White House briefings or a White House Correspondents' Dinner,  we barely even have a White House press.

Todd saying "Well gosh I just didn't believe them" as a political roundtable host, well, frankly he should be fired.

And he's not just a host, he's been NBC News's political director for over a decade now.  He's their top political voice for the network, and he's an idiot.

No wonder we're screwed.

Orange Meltdown, Con't

The Trump regime continues to be breathtakingly, cartoonishly evil from the word go and the country will not survive a second term intact as America.

President Trump’s 2020 campaign manager Brad Parscale reportedly discussed using facial recognition technology at Trump’s campaign rallies to analyze reactions from supporters in event crowds, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Parscale discussed the move with political operatives, but he was told by at least one company that the technology is not reliable yet, according to people familiar with the conversations, the Journal reported.

A campaign spokesperson denied that Parscale ever pursued the technology.

The Trump administration has utilized other technology at campaign rallies, including collecting millions of phone numbers, email addresses and other personal information from rally attendants when they register for tickets or sign up for text alerts.

The Trump team reportedly uses the data to look up the rally attendees’ political registrations and the elections in which they have voted. They cross-reference it with the data on the attendee’s consumer habits, which is collected by the Republican Party to forecast how likely each attendee is to vote in 2020 and who they may support campaign officials told the Journal.

That's bad enough, and today's impeachable offense:

The Journal also reported that Trump himself lobbied to bring cabinet members to his June rally in Orlando, Florida. The outlet said that acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney warned the president about potential violations of the Hatch Act, which bars federal employees from participating in political activities under their official titles.

Trump responded “I’m in charge of the Hatch Act” in a meeting with top aides and accused Mulvaney of being “weak,” according to the Journal.

"The enforcement of the law is whatever I say it is, and it doesn't apply to me" should again, be the immediate end of this regime, but of course it's normal behavior for the Chief Executive now, isn't it?  Oh, and "weak" Mulvaney is reportedly being replaced soon by either Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin or WH Advisor Kellyanne Conway.

Fun times all around.

Sub(poena) Optimal

Another week, another Trump regime flunky ignoring a House subpoena, and another round of mostly empty threats from the Democrats.

White House Counselor Kellyanne Conway on Monday defied a congressional subpoena, refusing to show up for testimony to the House Oversight and Reform Committee about her violations of the Hatch Act and prompting House Democrats to threaten to hold her in contempt of Congress.

In a letter to Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), the chairman of the panel, White House Counsel Pat Cipollone asserted the Trump administration’s long-standing view that current and former presidential advisers are “absolutely immune” from congressional testimony, writing: “Ms. Conway cannot be compelled to testify before Congress with respect to matters related to her service as a senior adviser to the president.”

“Because of this constitutional immunity, and in order to protect the prerogatives of the Office of the President, the president has directed Ms. Conway not to appear at the committee's scheduled hearing,” Cipollone continued.

Cummings threatened to hold Conway in contempt of Congress if she does not honor the subpoena before July 25.

“This is a clear cut case. We are not requiring her to testify about advice she gave the president or about the White House’s policy decisions,” Cummings said before adjourning Monday’s hearing.

“We are requiring her to testify before Congress about her multiple violations of federal law, her waste of taxpayer funds, and her actions that compromise public confidence in the integrity of the federal government,” he added.

Conway is just the latest administration official to find herself a target of House Democrats’ investigations. White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham slammed House Democrats, accusing them of trying to “harass” the White House with their myriad probes targeting the president and his administration.

“Today, Chairman Cummings and Democrats on the House Oversight Committee continued their purely political campaign to harass the president and his close advisors,” Grisham said. “Democrats continue to overreach and politicize the Office of Special Counsel — this time, by trying to silence Kellyanne Conway with ill-founded, phony allegations about the Hatch Act.”

So most likely we'll see some behind-the-scenes negotiations and a closed-door testimony on none of the subjects the Dems want to actually grill Conway about, and we'll move on.

We'll see if today's contempt votes for William Barr and Wilbur Ross go any better.

Last Call For The Con Way

The lawlessness of the Trump regime continues as Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway, tagged earlier this month by the Office of Special Counsel for violating Hatch Act prohibitions on using the power of a government position to campaign in her many TV appearances, now refuses to testify before a House committee on the matter.

The Trump-appointed ethics official who called for Kellyanne Conway’s firing last week is set to defend that decision in congressional testimony on Wednesday.

Henry Kerner, the chief of the White House’s Office of Special Counsel, has submitted testimony to the House Committee on Oversight and Reform in which he criticizes Conway for allegedly breaking the law by politicizing her post as White House Counselor.

“Her conduct hurts both federal employees, who may believe that senior officials can act with complete disregard for the Hatch Act, and the American people, who may question the nonpartisan operation of their government,” reads Kerner’s testimony, which The Daily Beast obtained.

“Ms. Conway’s conduct reflects not a misunderstanding of the law, but rather a disregard for it,” the testimony adds.

Kerner’s plan to appear at the hearing, which was confirmed by a senior Democratic committee aide, is a significant move, given that a host of administration officials have recently stiff-armed congressional testimony requests and subpoenas. The committee invited Conway as well, and plans to subpoena her if she does not appear, per Politico.

On June 13, Kerner’s office called on President Donald Trump to fire Conway for violating the Hatch Act, a federal law that prohibits government employees for doing political work while on the job. Kerner’s report charges that Conway repeatedly broke this law by publicly criticizing Democratic 2020 contenders in her capacity as a senior White House official.

Conway's response is that the Hatch Act violates the First Amendment free speech clause, so she will not testify before Congress, which is bit like saying "I don't believe that gravity should apply to me, so I'm going to jump out of this airplane."

In all seriousness, this is ridiculous.  The House should subpoena her and actually follow through with civil contempt.

Last Call For The Con Way

A federal watchdog agency is telling the White House that adviser Kellyanne Conway has indeed violated the Hatch Act on multiple occasions and should be immediately fired, the Trump Regime responded with a gigantic middle finger.

The Office of Special Counsel (OSC) sent a 16-page report to Trump accusing Conway of breaking the law on numerous occasions “by disparaging Democratic presidential candidates while speaking in her official capacity during television interviews and on social media” and calling on the president to oust her “immediately.”

“As a highly visible member of the administration, Ms. Conway’s violations, if left unpunished, would send a message to all federal employees that they need not abide by the Hatch Act’s restrictions,” special counsel Henry Kerner wrote to Trump. “Her actions thus erode the principal foundation of our democratic system — the rule of law.”

The White House immediately rejected the office’s recommendation that Conway be fired, saying its findings are “deeply flawed and violate her constitutional rights to free speech and due process.”

The office, which is unrelated to former special counsel Robert Mueller of the Russia investigation, has never recommended that the White House fire an employee over Hatch Act violations.

White House spokesman Steven Groves accused the office of making a politically motivated decision to target Conway.

“Its decisions seem to be influenced by media pressure and liberal organizations – and perhaps OSC should be mindful of its own mandate to act in a fair, impartial, non-political manner, and not misinterpret or weaponize the Hatch Act,” he said in a statement.

Expect Henry Kerner to be fired well before Kellyanne Conway.  And no, the White House doesn't give a damn about the Hatch Act or any other laws, because we no longer have rule of law in this country when it comes to the Executive Branch.

Conway is untouchable as Propaganda Secretary.

Trump White House counselor Kellyanne Conway on Thursday snapped at a reporter after he asked her for comment on the U.S. Office of Special Counsel’s conclusion that she has repeatedly broken the law.

CNBC White House correspondent Eamon Javers reports that he asked Conway if she had any reaction to the report on her repeated violations of the Hatch Act that bars most executive branch employees from engaging in political activity.

In response, Javers says Conway pointed at the door and said, “Can you leave please?”

Javers then asked her again — and she delivered a churlish response.

“I have no reaction,” Conway said. “Why would I give you a reaction?”

Nothing matters, and the media will continue to book Conway on news shows as if nothing happened, and Conway will continue to violate the Hatch Act.

It's Mueller Time, Con't

The Trump regime's gaslighting is getting out of hand, they believe they've achieved total victory and from here on it should be smooth sailing and a steady stream of Democrats going to prison and immigrants going to camps.

President Trump on Sunday continued to wage an attack against special counsel Robert Mueller, calling his investigation's report a "hit job" and claiming it was written by "The Trump Haters and Angry Democrats."

"The Trump Haters and Angry Democrats who wrote the Mueller Report were devastated by the No Collusion finding," Trump tweeted Sunday morning. "Nothing but a total 'hit job' which should never have been allowed to start in the first place!"

Trump added in a separate tweet that Democrats' investigations into him and his administration would cost them in the 2020 election.

"Despite No Collusion, No Obstruction, The Radical Left Democrats do not want to go on to Legislate for the good of the people, but only to Investigate and waste time," he said. "This is costing our Country greatly, and will cost the Dems big time in 2020!"

Trump's minions are spreading the gospel of absolution over Easter.

President Donald Trump's attorney Rudy Giuliani said while he would have advised the Trump campaign to avoid Russian help, he thought there was nothing wrong with a campaign taking information from Russia. 

"There's nothing wrong with taking information from Russians," Giuliani said Sunday on CNN's "State of the Union." 

Asked by CNN's Jake Tapper if he would have taken information from a foreign source, Giuliani said, "I probably wouldn't." 

"I wasn't asked," Giuliani said. "I would have advised, just out of excess of caution, don't do it."

Trump believes he's gotten away with the crime of the century.

Just days after the release of the highly anticipated Mueller report, one of President Donald Trump's top advisers, Kellyanne Conway, said Sunday the investigation found Trump committed no crime -- and even predicted another term for the president.

"The job of a prosecutor is to gather evidence and decide whether to indict or to decline to indict. They declined to indict," the White House counselor said on “This Week." "The president is not going to jail. He's staying in the White House for five and a half more years. Why? Because ... they found no crime, no conspiracy. That was the central premise."

Until the Democrats make it clear impeachment is coming, Trump is 100% correct, and he most likely will be reelected.

Last Call For Border Line Insanity, Con't

Donald Trump has threatened to close the southern border with Mexico several times in the last year over what he sees as President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador's "failure" to stop undocumented immigration, but this time he really really means it you guys.

White House counselor Kellyanne Conway said Sunday that President Donald Trump is serious about possibly closing the U.S.-Mexico border this week.

“It certainly isn’t a bluff. You can take the president seriously," she said on "Fox News Sunday," adding, Congress "can fix this."

"Congress can fix the problem of immigration that they’ve failed to fix. This president is looking at the metrics," she said, adding the U.S. has "never seen a surge" in immigration "like this."

On Friday, Trump said “there’s a very good likelihood” he would close the southern border this week.

"Mexico is going to have to do something, otherwise I’m closing the border," Trump said.

"I’ll just close the border," he added. "When you close the border, also you will stop a lot of the drugs from coming in."

She also defended the president's decision to cut off aid to the Central American countries of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. Trump has claimed the governments of those countries had "set up" migrant caravans for entry into the United States.

"We need to send a message," Conway said.

It's a bluff and everyone knows it.  Closing the border with Mexico would cost the country billions in trade dollars a day and Republicans in Congress aren't about to put up with that.  Trump has already blown a hole in the side of the US economy with his tariffs.  Closing the border with Mexico would only make things worse.

And speaking of making things worse...

Taking drastic action over illegal immigration, President Donald Trump moved Saturday to cut direct aid to El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, whose citizens are fleeing north and overwhelming U.S. resources at the southern border.

The State Department notified Congress that it would look to suspend 2017 and 2018 payments to the trio of nations, which have been home to some of the migrant caravans that have marched through Mexico to the U.S. border.

Amplified by conservative media, Trump has turned the caravans into the symbol of what he says are the dangers of illegal immigration — a central theme of his midterm campaigning last fall. With the special counsel’s Russia probe seemingly behind him, Trump has revived his warnings of the caravans’ presence.

Trump also has returned to a previous threat he never carried out — closing the border with Mexico. He brought up that possibility on Friday and revisited it in tweets Saturday, blaming Democrats and Mexico for problems at the border and beyond despite warnings that a closed border could create economic havoc on both sides.

“It would be so easy to fix our weak and very stupid Democrat inspired immigration laws,” Trump tweeted Saturday. “In less than one hour, and then a vote, the problem would be solved. But the Dems don’t care about the crime, they don’t want any victory for Trump and the Republicans, even if good for USA!′

If Republicans wanted to fix immigration, they could have done it at any time when they controlled the House, Senate, and White House in 2017 and 2018.  They chose not to.

But it's the Democrats' fault?

Please.

Trump Cards, Con't

If you hire nothing but opportunistic liars and dispose of them when their usefulness to you ends, you automatically have plausible deniability when they inevitably turn on you.

Counselor to the president Kellyanne Conway responded to allegations that President Donald Trump is a racist, saying "none of us would be" at the White House if that were true.

Conway also told ABC News Chief White House Correspondent Jonathan Karl on "This Week" that in the two years she has worked for Trump, she has “never a single time heard him use a racial slur about anyone.”

Conway was responding to a new book by former White House staffer Omarosa Manigault Newman who describes Trump as a racist and that she has heard him use racial slurs.

“I think that Omarosa unfortunately has undercut her own credibility,” Conway told Karl. “This is somebody who gave a glowing appraisal of Donald Trump the businessman, the star of 'The Apprentice,' the candidate, and indeed the president of the United States. She told your own network, Jon, ABC News, the day after she was fired from the White House that she had resigned … She said she never heard him use the N-word.”

Conway is lying of course about never hearing Trump use a racial slur, but she's actually correct about Omarosa Manigault Newman having no credibility and being a liar as well. "You can't believe the liars calling me a liar now, who lied for me previously when they were working for me, because we all know they are liars" has been Trump's defense for decades, and he knows exactly how to play that game.

It's the same defense Trump's people are using in the Manafort trial this week.

Rick Gates, former associate and protege of Paul Manafort, is testifying in the latter’s trial. Gates has already pleaded guilty to felony charges and is cooperating with the government. Under questioning by the prosecution he admitted committing multiple financial crimes with Manafort, as well as stealing from Manafort himself. On cross examination the defense hammered Gates, forcing him to further admit to his own many frauds and deceptions, including an extramarital affair.

Gates is a liar and a fraud. He’s testifying to help himself out in his own case. He carries a lot of baggage to that witness stand.

And he’s the government’s star witness.

Although that may seem bizarre, it’s a common occurrence in complex criminal cases. Often the best way — and sometimes the only way — for the government to learn what happened is to persuade someone who was on the inside to plead guilty and cooperate. Participants in an illegal enterprise may provide the crucial details necessary to convict others involved — typically those a few rungs higher up the criminal ladder. But such witnesses are subject to withering attacks on their own credibility and present real challenges for the government.

No matter where Mueller goes from here, whatever evidence presented against Trump that is obtained from Manafort or Gates or Michael Flynn for example, Trump and his supporters will scream LIARS and FAKE NEWS and ignore it.

Whether or not our media actually cuts through that noise, I have no idea.

Last Call For Kellyanne's Con Job

The DoJ wants to have a few words with White House mouthpiece Kellyanne Conway for violations of the Hatch Act for using her position at the White House to advocate for America's favorite child molester, failed Alabama senate candidate Roy Moore.

White House counselor Kellyanne Conway violated the Hatch Act on two occasions, the Office of Special Counsel (OSC) informed the Trump administration Tuesday. 

Appearing in her official capacity, Conway endorsed and advocated against political candidates, the watchdog said, referring its findings to President Trump "for appropriate disciplinary action." 

The violations occurred during two television appearances in 2017, one on Fox News's "Fox & Friends," and one on CNN's "New Day."

“While the Hatch Act allows federal employees to express their views about candidates and political issues as private citizens, it restricts employees from using their official government positions for partisan political purposes, including by trying to influence partisan elections,” OSC says in its report.

“Ms. Conway’s statements during the 'Fox & Friends' and 'New Day' interviews impermissibly mixed official government business with political views about candidates in the Alabama special election for U.S. Senate."

The report goes on to state that Conway received "significant training" on the Hatch Act and possible violations. OSC says it gave Conway, a former GOP pollster who served as Trump's campaign manager, the opportunity to respond as part of its report, but she did not.

If you think this particular White House gives a damn about the law, you'd be wrong.

The White House rejected the report’s findings, saying “Conway did not advocate for or against the election of any particular candidate” in a statement provided to reporters. 

“In fact, Kellyanne’s statements actually show her intention and desire to comply with the Hatch Act — as she twice declined to respond to the host’s specific invitation to encourage Alabamans to vote for the Republican,” deputy press secretary Hogan Gildley said.

And so no disciplinary action will be taken against Conway, and she will continue to represent the Oval Office.

Nothing will happen, because nobody cares.

Last Call For Russian To Judgment

We've known for a while that the Trump campaign was actively benefiting from Russian social media manipulation, but Spencer Ackerman and the Daily Beast's crew have now connected the Trump campaign directly to a Russian propaganda outlet pretending to be the digital voice of the Tennessee GOP.

Some of the Trump campaign’s most prominent names and supporters, including Trump’s campaign manager, digital director and son, pushed tweets from troll accounts paid for by the Russian government in the heat of the 2016 election campaign.

The Twitter account @Ten_GOP, which called itself the “Unofficial Twitter account of Tennessee Republicans,” was operated from the Kremlin-backed “Russian troll farm,” or Internet Research Agency, a source familiar with the account confirmed with The Daily Beast.

The account’s origins in the Internet Research Agency were originally reported by the independent Russian news outlet RBC. @Ten_GOP was created on November 19, 2015, and accumulated over 100 thousand followers before Twitter shut it down. The Daily Beast independently confirmed the reasons for @Ten_GOP's account termination.

The discovery of the now-unavailable tweets presents the first evidence that several members of the Trump campaign pushed covert Russian propaganda on social media in the run-up to the 2016 election.

A Twitter spokesperson declined to comment, “for privacy and security reasons."

And several times, including before and right up to the election, the Trump campaign helped spread tweets from the fake account.

Two days before election day, Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway tweeted a post by @Ten_GOP regarding Hillary Clinton’s email.

“Mother of jailed sailor: 'Hold Hillary to same standards as my son on Classified info' #hillarysemail #WeinerGate” the tweet reads.

Three weeks before the election, Brad Parscale, the Trump campaign’s digital director, retweeted a separate post from @Ten_GOP.

“Thousands of deplorables chanting to the media: "Tell The Truth!" RT if you are also done w/ biased Media!” the tweet read.

President Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr. followed the account until its closure on August 23rd of this year. Trump Jr. retweeted the account three times, including an allegation of voter fraud in Florida one week before the election.

“BREAKING: #VoterFraud by counting tens of thousands of ineligible mail in Hillary votes being reported in Broward County, Florida Please, RT,” the tweet read.

Trump Jr. also retweeted the account on Election Day.

“This vet passed away last month before he could vote for Trump.. Here he is in his #MAGA hat.. #voted #ElectionDay,” the account wrote.

Former Trump National Security Advisor Michael Flynn retweeted the Russian-backed troll account at least once. His son, Michael Flynn Jr., retweeted the account 34 times before it was removed from Twitter in August for its ties to Russian propaganda.

The account notably pushed for Flynn’s reappointment as Trump’s national security advisor, a job Flynn lost after press revelations that he’d lied about his telephone discussions with the Russian ambassador after the election hacks. It also repeatedly pushed Breitbart-backed talking points, including a fake news story about a gang rape in Twin Falls, Idaho that merited dozens of articles from Breitbart News.

And even though this was clearly a fake account, it had over 100k followers (mostly Russian bots of course) and was challenged and reported by the actual Tennessee GOP account @tngop, Twitter allowed it to continue even after being suspended in July. In fact, the @Ten_GOP account was operating up until six weeks ago when it was shut down by Twitter as part of the service's crackdown on fake Russian propaganda accounts.

But the larger story is that this account was specifically retweeted multiple times by the Trump campaign.  They knew to do it, and knew to retweet this particular account.  It's the most obvious evidence yet that the Trump campaign was an active participant in spreading Russian propaganda on social media, propaganda designed to help the Trump campaign win in 2016.

This one is big, guys.  And you'd better believe there's more evidence like this coming.

Kellyanne Con-Job Gives Up The ACA Game

Right-wing news outlets are "useful" these days because Trump regime folks keep talking to them and giving away their plans.  Nobody's more guilty of this than regime TV mouthpiece Kellyanne Conway, who regularly makes the rounds on FOX to fly the colors (orange, mostly).  These guys aren't clever enough to lie, there's no need to read the tea leaves, Trump makes threats and tries to follow up on them whenever he can.

So where is Trump going after this week's Obamacare crash and burn?  Kellyanne knows and straight up told Chris Wallace of FOX News Sunday.

WALLACE: OK, let’s not waste any more time. Let’s talk -- Kellyanne, let's talk about ObamaCare.

The president put out a new tweet today. I want to put it on the screen. He wrote: Don’t give up Republican senators, the world is watching, repeal and replace, and go to 51 votes, nuclear option, get cross state lines and more.

Is that the president’s plan, stay on repeal and replace, change the Senate rules and legislative filibuster so that you can pass a fuller repeal and replace, including selling insurance across state lines?

CONWAY: The president will not accept those who said it's, quote, time to move on. He wants to help the millions of Americans who have suffered with no coverage. They were lied to by the last president. They couldn't keep the doctor. They couldn't keep their plan.

We’ve met with the ObamaCare victims at the White House several times now. They’re real people, they’re suffering.

And when he talks about the 51 votes, the president is basically making the case that so many of the components of real healthcare reform, Chris, requires 60 votes -- the drug pricing, the selling of insurance across state lines, the associated health plans that allow those who don't get their health insurance to the employers like you and I do, or to government benefits, who have been left out because the premiums are too high.

Premiums have doubled. We see in some states that there are no insurers --

(CROSSTALK)

WALLACE: Let's talk about that. Kellyanne --

CONWAY: So, he will. He will stick with it.

WALLACE: OK, failing it, and fail -- and then we should point out that both Republicans and Democrats say that there’s no chance they’re going to change the Senate rules.

Here’s what the president says his plan is.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: I said from the beginning, let ObamaCare implode and then do it. I turned out to be right. Let ObamaCare implode.

(APPLAUSE)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WALLACE: Failing repeal and replace, is that really what the president intends to do? Does he intend to cut off what are called cost-sharing reductions which lower the out-of-pocket expenses for people, lower income people? And what about -- you talk about real people, what about the millions of people while ObamaCare is imploding that are going to lose healthcare coverage?

CONWAY: So, Chris, I saw the comment from Mr. Schumer, Senator Schumer, about this. What is their plan to help? The CSR payments are being made and we've already got an opinion by one court because you have members of Congress who sued to say that under ObamaCare, this money was never authorized through the Congress. And so, they would like an opportunity to do that, which is, of course, the normal course of business.

Can I just ask Senator Schumer --

(CROSSTALK)

WALLACE: Is the present going to cut off the CSR payments, the out-of-pocket payments? He can do it starting next month, this week.

CONWAY: Yes, he can. He can -- he's going to make that decision this week, and that’s the decision that only he can make.

I mean, that's as loud of an alarm bell as it gets, guys.  Trump has said on Twitter that he plans to cut off these CSR payments (He calls them "bailouts" when they're not, they fund the subsidies for Obamacare premium payments.)  If he does that, Obamacare basically collapses.  It will mean that health insurers will leave the program and that millions will be unable to afford health insurance, period.

So yes, Trump has been screaming about sabotaging Obamacare for weeks now, and guess what? He thinks he can do it.  I bet he's certainly going to try this week.

It's far from over, as I said earlier this morning.

Forget It Jake, It's Trumptown

I've had my disagreements with the mostly harmless Jake Tapper, but it seems the Trump Regime has finally made him self-aware, that as a voice in political media that he has a platform to demand basic truths from the White House.

Of course, dissent is not tolerated in the Trump era.  Even the chuckleheads at Politico 2.0 Axios have figured that part out.

A source with direct knowledge tells Axios that Republican operatives were urging at least one conservative-friendly website to write Jake Tapper hit pieces yesterday after his hard-hitting interview with Kellyanne Conway.

This is hardly shocking, and happens all the time, but in this weaponized political-media environment it could get nasty fast. 

Why go after him: A central part of Team Trump's strategy is discrediting the mainstream media. CNN is his top target, with the New York Times a close second. Jake Tapper is the network's star interviewer, and he's been giving the most aggressive interrogations of Team Trump for months now.

As good ol' TBogg points out, there's a method to this madness.

“I think she has a point in that the media is more aggressive,” Tapper explained. “But I think that there is a good reason for it and it’s exactly what you just said. The stakes are much higher. He’s the president of the United States. a comment he makes about Boeing will affect Boeing’s stock. A comment he makes about a judge, who knows what could happen? A comment he makes trying to discredit the entire media could actually have an effect on things. What a president says is more important than a candidate.” 

And that's the key.  Tapper is saying that holy crap, Trump should be held accountable by the press for his massive lies.  Since the whole point is for Trump to brutally discredit his critics, Tapper saying that he'll start calling out the Trump regime can't be tolerated for long.

I fully expect Trump to call for Tapper's head.  Whether or not he gets it will go pretty far in deciding if we still have an even basically functioning media.

The Bowling Green (Made-Up) Massacre

At this point we have a regime in charge of America trying to create a Reichstag fire event and they're not smart enough to be able to spell "Reichstag" correctly.

One of President Donald Trump's top White House advisers referred to a terror attack that never happened in an MSNBC interview that aired on Thursday night. 

Kellyanne Conway suggested that the so-called "Bowling Green Massacre" in Bowling Green, Kentucky, was one of the catalysts for Trump's executive order banning nationals from seven Muslim-majority states like Iraq. 

There was no such attack in the US. 

During her interview with MSNBC's Chris Matthews, Conway described the false incident as two Iraqi refugees having come to the US, becoming radicalized, and masterminding the nonexistent attack. Conway offered no evidence to back up her claims and flatly suggested that "most people don't know ... because it didn't get covered."
Neither Conway, nor a White House spokesperson immediately responded to a request for comment. 

The only incident surrounding Iraqi refugees and Bowling Green, Kentucky, in recent history was a 2011 case in which two Iraqi nationals were indicted on federal charges on accusations that they tried to provide material support to terrorists and to al Qaeda in Iraq. 

The FBI's 2011 press release said that the two men, Waad Ramadan Alwan, 30, and Mohanad Shareef Hammadi, 23, were former residents of Iraq who lived in Bowling Green at the time of their arrests. Alwan was sentenced to 40 years in federal prison in and Hammadi received a life term in 2013, the FBI said. 

Despite Conway's allegations, there was no massacre in Bowling Green, and, according to the FBI's statement on the matter, there was no plan for a terror attack in that city.

I mean what kinda of obvious nonsense is this?  An administration spokesperson is on the news citing a terrorist attack that never happened as proof that we need the regime's unconstitutional policies to remain in effect.  This is completely off the map, guys. It's fake news at its utmost.

Conway's game is obvious to the point of derisions, but how long before the "Bowling Green Massacre" somehow becomes "real" in the eyes of Trump and his nutjobs?  Will the media dare to say "We're no longer booking her as she's a complete liar?"

Where we go from here will say a lot about whether or not America survives.

Authoritarianism For Dummies

While the battle over the Trump regime's awful immigration ban continues, regime spokeswoman Kellyanne Conway wants to know when media critics of Trump will be disposed of.

Kellyanne Conway in an interview Sunday slammed the media, asking when network reporters will be fired over their coverage of the Trump administration.

"Who is cleaning house? Which one is going to be the first network to get rid of these people, the people who think things were just not true?" Conway asked on "Fox News Sunday."

Conway, a key adviser to President Trump, criticized networks for their coverage of her "alternative facts" statement one week ago, noting that there were other things she said in Sunday show interviews that could have been the reporters' focus.

"I went on three network shows and spoke for 35 minutes on three network Sunday shows. You know what got picked? The fact that I said 'alternative facts,' not the fact that I ripped a new one to some of those hosts that they never cover the facts that matter," Conway said.

"Not one network person has been let go. Not one silly political analyst and pundit who talked smack all day long about Donald Trump has been let go," she added. "I'm too polite to mention their names, but they know who they are, and they are all wondering who will be the first to go. The election was three months ago. None of them have been let go."

Dissent will not be tolerated by the Trump regime, you know.  Eventually the answer to "Who will rid me of these troublesome media priests?" will be answered by heavy White House pressure from the regime and heads will roll pretty quickly.

Actual President Steve Bannon has long wanted the destruction of the America free press.  Conway is laying down yet another warning that this is one of the Trump regime's major goals.  When it happens, it will happen blindingly fast.  Once the first goes, well, many many more will follow. The regime will need total control of the media before too long, and it will most likely get it, at least for a while.

You didn't think this had a happy ending, did you?

The Trump Austerity Plan Starts With Medicaid

If you were somehow expecting the Trump regime to save you from House Speaker Paul Ryan's trillions in draconian austerity cuts, you're exactly the fools that Trump and the GOP were counting on to hand over the power to destroy the safety net to them.  They were laughing at you then. They're coming for you now with the long knives.

President Trump’s plan to replace the Affordable Care Act will propose giving each state a fixed amount of federal money in the form of a block grant to provide health care to low-income people on Medicaid, a top adviser to Mr. Trump said in an interview broadcast on Sunday. 

The adviser, Kellyanne Conway, who is Mr. Trump’s White House counselor, said that converting Medicaid to a block grant would ensure that “those who are closest to the people in need will be administering” the program. 

A block grant would be a radical change. Since its creation in 1965, Medicaid has been an open-ended entitlement. If more people become eligible because of a recession, or if costs go up because of the use of expensive new medicines, states receive more federal money. 

If Congress decides to create block grants for Medicaid, lawmakers will face thorny questions with huge political and financial implications: How much money will each state receive? How will the initial allotments be adjusted — for population changes, for general inflation, for increases in medical prices, for the discovery of new drugs and treatments? Will the federal government require states to cover certain populations and services? Will states receive extra money if they have not expanded Medicaid eligibility under the Affordable Care Act, but decide to do so in the future? 

Ms. Conway, speaking on the NBC program “Sunday Today,” said that with a block grant, “you really cut out the fraud, waste and abuse, and you get the help directly” to intended beneficiaries. 

Medicaid covers more than 70 million people at a combined cost of more than $500 billion a year to the federal government and the states. More than 20 million people have gained coverage under the Affordable Care Act, more than half of them through Medicaid.

So the Trump plan would not only eliminate Medicaid coverage for ten million by rolling back Medicaid expansion, but converting Medicaid to a block grant would eliminate coverage for tens of millions more, particularly in red states.  States wouldn't have to spend the money on coverage, and in fact red states would almost certainly use the money to give tax cuts to corporations and the wealthy (since states actually have to balance their budgets.)

In other words, this will end up being hundreds of billions in austerity cuts yearly, and tens of millions of Americans without basic health coverage.

That's just the start.  I don't think people have realized yet just how bad these cuts are going to be, and I don't know if Senate Democrats will be able to stop it.

All Over The Place On The ACA

Yesterday was a bad day for the GOP on Obamacare repeal, judging from the headlines at Talking Points Memo.

First, that's NC Republican Walter "Freedom Fries" Jones in a state of near-panic over the lack of a replacement for the ACA, even though Republicans have been working on one for more than six year.

Rep. Walter Jones (R-NC) on Wednesday joined a growing, if not extremely vocal, chorus of Republicans warning that the GOP should not move forward with its longtime goal of repealing the Affordable Care Act until it has a replacement plan ready to go.

“You cannot repeal and not replace,” Jones told MSNBC’s Peter Alexander. “You have to replace.”

Asked to elaborate on what a replacement would look like, Jones acknowledged that he and his fellow GOP lawmakers have yet to see a proposed bill in writing.

Second, Wyoming GOP Sen. John Barrasso doesn't think anyone's actually getting insurance through the ACA because it's all a big lie or something.

Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY) accused leading Democrats, including President Obama, of making up the number of people insured under Obamacare.

"It’s interesting the numbers because the president uses one number. Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi came out with a much higher number. I think they're making them up," Barrasso told reporters Wednesday on Capitol Hill when asked about whether the GOP plans to maintain Obamacare's coverage levels. "We've done a lot of research into what the numbers truly are."

Which brings us to Kellyanne Mouth of Sauron Conway, who says "If you like your Obamacare plan, you can keep it!"

Donald Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway says that the Trump administration doesn't want anyone who currently has health insurance to lose it due to Republican efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

“We don't want anyone who currently has insurance to not have insurance,” Conway said Tuesday morning on MSNBC's "Morning Joe."

Conway was responding to co-host Joe Scarborough, who asked if Americans who “have healthcare today under the Affordable Care Act” would be covered under the Republican replacement plan for the healthcare law.

Conway didn’t present any details on what a replacement for Obamacare would look like in the interview. She said it would be "the ideal situation" if Republicans had a replacement plan for the ACA immediately available upon repeal, but said “some experts say that it could take years to actually complete the process.”

I'd laugh at this upcoming disaster, except for the fact that millions of Americans are going to suffer because these assholes hate the fact a black president did more for America than these idiots ever will, and all the people who voted for him will have to be punished.

Never forget that's the plan.