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Trump Timeline ... Trumpocalypse
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House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) in a Monday morning interview said there is no evidence former Trump campaign advisor George Papadopoulos met with President Trump, despite a widely-disseminated photo of the two sitting around the same table for a meeting.
“If Papadopoulos was such a major figure, you had nothing on him, you know, the guy lied,” Nunes told “Fox & Friends.” “As far as we can tell, Papadopoulos never even knew who – never even had met with the president.”
Papadopoulos, a former foreign policy advisor to the Trump campaign, is included in a photo that shows then-candidate Trump and then-Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) sitting at opposite heads of a table.
Nunes’s comment comes after the House Intelligence Committee last week released a controversial memo that accuses the Justice Department of abusing its surveillance powers. That memo names Papadopoulos, who pleaded guilty last year to lying to the FBI, as the individual who “triggered” the FBI’s opening of a counterintelligence probe in July of 2016.
Over the weekend, we received 103 pages of records responsive to Wittes’s first two requests—messages from FBI leadership around the country and across the bureau regarding the firing of Director Comey. The bureau identified 116 pages of responsive material and withheld only 13 pages, so this material constitutes the overwhelming bulk of communications to staff on the subject of the firing.
What does it show? Simply put, it shows that Ellingsen nailed it when she described a reaction of “shock” and “profound sadness” at the removal of a beloved figure to whom the workforce was deeply attached. It also shows that no aspect of the White House’s statements about the bureau were accurate—and, indeed, that the White House engendered at least some resentment among the rank and file for whom it purported to speak. As Amy Hess, the special agent in charge in Louisville, put it: “On a personal note, I vehemently disagree with any negative assertions about the credibility of this institution or the people herein.”
Before detailing the story these documents tell, let’s pause a moment over the story they do not tell. They contain not a word that supports the notion that the FBI was in turmoil. They contain not a word that reflects gratitude to the president for removing a nut job. There is literally not a single sentence in any of these communications that reflects criticism of Comey’s leadership of the FBI. Not one special agent in charge describes Comey’s removal as some kind of opportunity for new leadership. And if any FBI official really got on the phone with Sanders to express gratitude or thanks “for the president’s decision,” nobody reported that to his or her staff.
Lost in the shuffle of the Washington shouting matches over the Russia investigations last week was the fact that the Trump administration missed a great opportunity to impose further sanctions on Moscow.
In 2017, Congress passed the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act by an overwhelming majority and President Trump signed the bill into law. It mandated the administration to provide a list by Jan. 31 of Russian persons and/or entities to be sanctioned for their closeness to the Russian regime as punishment for the aggression in Ukraine and Russia’s incontrovertible intervention in our 2016 elections.
The Treasury Department did not actually draft a list of persons and entities close to President Putin whose sanctioning would present to Russia an unmistakable sign of our serious intent. Instead the Treasury Department, possibly at the last moment, merely repeated a list of Russian oligarchs taken from Forbes.ru and thus displayed its “compliance” with the legislation.
The result was congressional anger, allied dismay, and Russian scorn. Moscow’s stock exchange actually went up after this news showing its derision at the lazy and confused U.S. effort. This action also clearly raised questions in allied capitals as to the seriousness of our anti-Russian position while we are admonishing them to do more against Moscow. This episode — especially in the context of the other news concerning the Nunes memo and Mueller investigations — embodied many of what have long since become negative hallmarks of this administration.
The rapprochement didn’t last long.
President Donald Trump’s latest tweet invoking the U.K. -- this time on the country’s much-venerated National Health Service -- is again landing him in hot water. That’s after he previously rankled officials by making off-the-cuff comments about terrorist attacks, sharing videos from a British fringe far-right group and canceling a trip to open the new U.S. embassy in London.
“The Democrats are pushing for Universal HealthCare while thousands of people are marching in the U.K. because their U system is going broke and not working,” Trump said on Twitter on Monday. “Dems want to greatly raise taxes for really bad and non-personal medical care. No thanks!”
The rebuke was not long in coming.
“NHS may have challenges but I’m proud to be from the country that invented universal coverage - where all get care no matter the size of their bank balance,” said U.K. Health Minister Jeremy Hunt said in a tweet.
Vince Cable, leader of the Liberal Democrats, said in an interview on Sky television that Trump needed the NHS explained to him: “He obviously doesn’t understand it.”
When my wife and I were married in 2016, we had the wedding of our dreams. We each wore wedding dresses; our fathers walked us down the aisle, one after the other; and we danced to Sam Cooke’s “We’re Having a Party” at the end of the night, in a circle surrounded by so many relatives and friends — including two nonagenarians. If not for the fact that there were two brides and zero grooms, it would have resembled any other heteronormative, middle-class American wedding in 2016.
That dream didn’t always seem possible. Before coming out in 2012, I struggled through months of therapy, preparing for the possibility of losing all connection with my Irish Catholic family. I prepared for the possibility that I would be viewed as an outsider, as someone different or perhaps even worse by friends, colleagues and strangers. I confessed nervously, first to my parents, brother and one trusted cousin, asking them to spread the word through layers of aunts and uncles and cousins. While it took some time for them to process the news — time that was truly painful — every single person in my family accepted us. They treated us normally; everyone acted like it was obvious that two girls, even two girls with long hair who wore makeup and high heels, could be in a relationship, and that was fine.
I knew then that we were lucky. I only realize now how extremely fortuitous the timing was. I came out to my family in the middle of the whirlwind sprint toward full LGBTQ rights that was sweeping the country during the Obama administration. Court cases affirming those rights dominated headlines; celebrities were coming out seemingly every day. It emboldened me to proclaim who I was and whom I was dating. The national climate allowed me to feel safe. It seemed like people were on my side. When we married in 2016, we were benefiting from the good luck of landing in the most accepting time for LGBTQ rights in history.
Now, a year and a half into our marriage, things have started to change.
TrumPsychopathy ...
WTFU ...
