Month: September 2021

Categories
Donald Trump Joe Biden The Biden Administration The Trump Adminstration

Jen Psaki Slaps Down Reporter Who Tries To Suggest Biden Is The Same As Trump

On Thursday, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki got a question from Michael Shear of the New York Times which sounded more like a query from Fox News or Newsmax. And she quickly dispatched Shear for what he asked.

Specifically, Shear used one of those classic “people are saying” questions that are the favorite of right-wing media and their savior, failed, one-term former President Donald Trump:

“In a number of issues, in the last, say, several weeks in which advocates – allies – of the president are describing him as ‘Trump-like,’ much less in terms of his personality and sort of tone and tenor obviously but, but in terms of policy, even today, [a] representative of the Cuban government describing the frustration with the, with the president, can continue to maintain Trump-era policies, vis-à-vis Cuba. Does the, what’s the President’s reaction? And does he accept that in some areas of policy, he is, you know, in agreement with the former president?”

Psaki began by trying to get clarity and specifics on who had made such comments about the president:

“So, just for the sake of argument here, not argument but discussion, beyond the representative of the Cuban government – But who are we talking about here, who’s saying that the President’s like Trump?”

Shear told the press secretary:

“Oh, I mean they’re, they’re, they’re I mean they’re I could find you quotes, we, there have been quotes at our paper, quotes and lots of, lots of folks have, depending on the issue, whether they are immigration advocates or, you know folks in the Afghanistan, who sort of watch Afghanistan there, there have been numerous on the record descriptions of the President, embracing – and it’s actually in some ways just a factual statement.”

Psaki:

“On what policy, on what policy, sir? What specific policies?”

Shear:

“Well, I mean, for example, Afghanistan would have been the maintaining of the former president’s decision to withdraw troops, on immigration, it’s in maintaining Title 42 and keeping Title 42 in place.”

Clearly amused by the question, Psaki began destroying everything Shear had just said:

“So, look. I take each one of these – on Afghanistan, the former president struck a deal without the Afghan government that we heard the military convey yesterday led to the demoralization of the Afghan security forces and the Afghan government, where he also released 5,000 Taliban fighters into Afghanistan.”

Title 42, it should be noted, deals with public health, ABC News reports:

Title 42 is a clause of the 1944 Public Health Services Law that “allows the government to prevent the introduction of individuals during certain public health emergencies,” said Olga Byrne, the immigration director at the International Rescue Committee.

Seeing as how we’re in the midst of a pandemic, what Psaki said next just makes good sense, and she also managed to get a dig in at Trump:

“Title 42 is a public health, is a public health requirement, a public, because we’re in the middle of a pandemic, which, by the way, we would have made progress on had the former president actually addressed the pandemic and not suggest that people inject bleach, so I think we’re in a bit of a different place.”

It’s been said before but it bears repeating: Jen Psaki is a national treasure. It’s so refreshing to see a press secretary who actually responds to the questions.

Categories
Business Donald Trump The Trump Organization

Trump’s DC Hotel Is So Deserted That He’s Having Trouble Finding A Buyer: Report

Failed, one-term former President Donald Trump and his company, the Trump Organization, are desperately trying to sell their hotel in Washington, D.C., but business is so bad at the property that no one wants to make an offer to buy the hotel.

Jane Recker of Washingtonian recently dropped by the Trump hotel in the nation’s capital and reports it looked, sounded, and felt more like a tomb than a hotel:

It was 5 pm on the Tuesday after Labor Day, and roughly a dozen customers were in evidence—a tiny number for such a cavernous space. We camped out at the bar with a martini and a plate of fries, taking in the (lack of) scene. At one point, a maskless man approached us and asked, “Are you part of the Trump book club?” We were not. He wandered away, soon joining a small group across the room. A woman came to the bar and got a glass of Grenache. “I usually order the Trump wine,” she said, “but . . . .” She gazed around. “This is really a change from what it used to be. It used to be packed all the time.” She gulped her wine and left.

Another sign of just how little is going on at the Trump hotel: Recker spent two hours in the lobby and the elevator doors, she notes, didn’t move a single time.

At one point, it seemed things might change when a man approached Recker and sounded like he had some information for her:

Then again, maybe more is happening than is discernible to the naked eye. We struck up a conversation with a guy who was eager to chat with a journalist. “You ever write about Harris?” he asked, referring, we assumed, to the Vice President. He looked around suspiciously. “Meet me here at 10 o’ clock,” he said. “Get a few Irish whiskeys in me, I can tell you a lot of things.” We didn’t stick around.

The hotel has been on the market since 2019 and yet there have be no offers made to the Trump Organization. For all intents and purposes, it might just as well be what it once was before renovation: The old Post Office. At least when it served that purpose some people came in and gave the place some business.

Categories
Congress Coronavirus GOP WTF?!

Madison Cawthorn Gets Brutally Fact-Checked For Saying Mask Mandates Lead Kids To Commit Suicide

It’s hard to decide exactly which member of the freshman GOP house class is the most ridiculous and clueless.

Is it Lauren Boebert of Colorado, who has called for the church to decide what the government does? Or would the dubious honor go Georgia’s Marjorie Taylor Greene, who said Jewish space lasers were the cause of wildfires in California?

Based on what Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-NC) said recently at a school board meeting, Boebert and Greene have some serious competition when it comes to spewing bullshit and conspiracy theories.

According to Cawthorn, a hospital in North Carolina recently reported a 255% spike in suicide deaths among children during the COVID pandemic. Passing mask mandates could lead even more children to try and take their own lives:

“You can see what the World Health Organization was saying, you know, putting masks on children does have some mental problem — it increases depression. You know, we saw death and suicide rates are up 255% in one study that a hospital did in America because they’re starting to see that people are really feeling disconnected from that social interaction.”

However, Congressman Cawthorn got several major facts incorrect, according to WRAL reporter Paul Specht:

We asked his office that. We said, where are you getting these numbers?And they sent us a link to an NPR story. And it’s titled Child Psychiatrists Warn That The Pandemic May Be Driving Up Kids’ Suicide Risk. And it’s from back in February. Cawthorn’s office pulled out a line and it talked about suicide attempts among young people at one hospital in Indianapolis … But if you look at the year-to-year numbers — all of 2019 to all of 2020 — the hospital reported a rise that was much lower. In fact, a hospital spokesman told us they saw a 51% increase over the year starting in March 2020 to March 2021.

We could not find any evidence that those numbers at that hospital in particular were in any way related to mask policies at schools.

Republicans know they don’t have the facts or science on their side, so they just make shit up and pretend it’s true. And many of their voters believe every word of what they say! It’s cultish behavior and it’s killing people.

Categories
Crime Donald Trump The Trump Organization

Former Prosecutor Says He’s Found Evidence Of Financial Fraud By Donald Trump

First things first. Let’s admit that when it comes to Donald Trump, those of us who loathe him are always chomping at the bits and impatiently waiting for the day he’s indicted and booked for the crimes he’s committed.

Now that we have that out of the way, the time has come to take a close look at the case that has already been filed against the Trump Organization and its CFO, Allen Weisselberg, who is facing decades behind bars if he doesn’t agree to cooperate with prosecutors and testify against his boss.

This leads us to an incredibly illuminating article from Andrea Bernstein of The New Yorker, who notes:

Even if no additional charges are filed, the former President’s company faces a potential reckoning. The charging documents and interviews with former prosecutors and white-collar defense lawyers indicate that the District Attorney is accumulating evidence of pervasive tax fraud. The case goes to the heart of what made—and still makes—Trump Trump.

Of course, as he so often does, Donald will likely toss Weisselberg under the bus and claim he had no idea that illegal activity was taking place at his company.

So is there any possible way to prove that Trump did indeed know Weissselberg was inflating the value of the Trump Organization in order to get loans from banks and then deflating the values when it came time to pay taxes?

One section of the indictment against Weisselberg and the Trump Organization shows that the former president won’t be able to claim ignorance of the crimes committed in his name:

People familiar with Trump’s legal battles also took notice of one element of the allegation: Weisselberg is described as making changes to something called “Donald J. Trump’s Detail General Ledger.” If true, the allegation would mean that, in addition to Weisselberg and Trump’s accountants keeping a set of records detailing the company’s finances, there was another ledger, one specifically maintained, the name implies, for Donald J. Trump. “My jaw literally dropped when I saw that,” Tristan Snell, a former New York assistant attorney general, who investigated claims of fraud against Trump University that resulted in a twenty-five-million-dollar settlement, said. “If there was a ledger for him, it blows up the notion that Trump didn’t know about it—it means there was a set of numbers prepared for Donald Trump.” Snell said the public disclosure of the separate ledger’s existence is a signal from the prosecutors to the former President: “We have your ledger.”

They have his ledger. And the ledger shows that crimes were committed and Donald Trump knew about them. He was fully aware of the massive levels of bank and tax fraud. He knew and he condoned it. It can even be said that he expected those who worked for him to do whatever was necessary to help him commit the fraud.

Donald Trump is going to prison. There’s no way to predict when, but it will happen. We’ll just have to tamp down our impatience and wait. But it certainly sounds like the wait will be worthwhile and richly rewarded.

 

Categories
Abortion Congress GOP WTF?!

Marjorie Taylor Greene Claims She’s Worried Abortion Will Produce ‘Genocide In The Black Population’

According to Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) — aka the “Jewish space laser” nut — the reason she’s being such an asshole on a daily basis as a member of Congress is because she wants to eliminate all abortions in the United States.

Appearing on Real America’s Voice, Greene tried to explain away her verbal attack on her Democratic colleagues on the steps of the Capitol last Friday by suggesting that her vitriol had been about abortion:

“I said, ‘Are you happy you passed a bill that babies can be slaughtered up until the day of birth?’ There were so many Democrats and they have their signs: ‘Build Back Better Women.’ How on Earth is it making women better by creating a law where they can kill a baby in their womb even though the baby is about to be born? How are we building back better women when we’re turning men into women?”

She continued:

“And so I just started speaking out. Most of them weren’t saying anything to me but it was Debbie Dingell — like a dingleberry — she started fussing at me, telling me I needed to be civil to my colleagues and act the way I would act going to church.”

Of course, it’s highly unlikely that Greene even goes to church. And if she does, she certainly hasn’t learned anything about the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

But it was what Greene said next that proved her blatant hypocrisy and exposed her words as lies:

“They believe that life is so important that they are willing to shut down our economy, force children to stay home from school so no one dies from Covid. All of them voted for this bill that is actually producing genocide in the black population because they put Planned Parenthood mostly in these black-dominated neighborhoods and, you know, they’re just pushing abortion and birth control.

“When we’re passing bills like that, no one in here believes in God. We’re fighting against this and I refuse to be quiet anymore. It’s not go-along and get-along.”

Does Marjorie Taylor Greene expect us to believe that she gives a diddly damn about black people in the United States? She wanted to start a caucus to advocate for the “Anglo-Saxon political tradition,” as CNN reported in April:

Punchbowl News obtained a flier promoting the new caucus, which calls for a “common respect for uniquely Anglo-Saxon political traditions” and pushes a series of conspiracy theories about election integrity. The flier also outlined a nativist argument warning that “mass immigration” poses a threat to “the long-term existential future of America as a unique country with a unique culture and a unique identity.”

Does it sound like Greene cares about black people? Of course she doesn’t. She’s a racist like the vast majority of the GOP. She just wants an issue she can run on in 2022 when she tries to get reelected.

Marjorie Taylor Greene is a cancer on the Congress and the country. Let’s hope she gets beaten in the midterm elections.