Trump Timeline ... Trumpocalypse

[Michael Scally MD]

DIRTY TRICKSTER LIVES MATTER
https://claytoonz.com/2019/02/05/dirty-trickster-lives-matter/

Conservatives are livid and up in arms over the way Roger Stone was arrested last month.

According to Stone, 29 FBI agents and U.S. Marshals were used in the pre-dawn raid to arrest Trump’s longtime adviser last month in Miami. Since this was conducted during Trump’s government shutdown, several of the agents volunteered for the assignment. Who wouldn’t want to arrest a guy with a Nixon tattoo on his back?

Fox News’ Judge Andrew Napolitano called it “Gestapo-like.” Senator and southern dandy Lindsey Graham sent a letter to the FBI demanding they they justify their tactics. Sean Hannity wailed about the injustice.

Former Sheriff and pardoned criminal Joe Arpaio decried the use of armored vehicles, even though he once sent one piloted by Steven Seagal to bust a cockfighting ring. Seagal used the footage for a TV show and was later sued by the accused for killing his puppy during the raid. These conservatives are really hard on dogs.

Donald Trump, who once said police should bang criminals’ heads against the top of squad cars as they’re being placed in the back seats, was also upset.

Conservatives claim Stone was not a flight risk, doesn’t own a gun, and isn’t a danger to society. How can law enforcement be confident he’s not a gun owner or a flight risk? How can they be sure he wouldn’t destroy evidence? As for that “danger to society” thing; anyone who helps Russia install a national security risk like Donald Trump into the presidency is a danger to a society.

Roger Stone compared his treatment to that of Osama bin Laden, who in case you don’t remember, is now dead and is lying at the bottom of the Indian Ocean. He also compared it to the arrests of El Chapo and Pablo Escobar. El Chapo is currently in prison and on trial, and Escobar, like bin Laden, is dead. The fact that Roger Stone is able to walk freely on the streets right now, breath air, and issue stupid statements proves his treatment wasn’t anything like bin Laden’s, Escobar’s, or El Chapo.

Stone also said the agents terrified his wife and dogs. I wonder if Seal Team 6 traumatized bin laden’s dogs during their raid. It is nice that animal welfare is now a concern for Roger Stone, who once gave the Wicked Witch warning to a colleague against testifying against him and Trump, promising to get him and his little dog too.

They also complained that CNN was there to film the arrest and accused the FBI of tipping off the network. CNN says they were watching Stone’s home which is very believable as everyone, including Stone, were publicly expecting him to be arrested soon.

Stone is upset he wasn’t able to conveniently schedule his arrest, because rich white guys should be allowed the courtesy to choose how they’re arrested.

This outrage is every selective. Did any of these critics of the FBI defend Mike Brown, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, or the hundreds of other public cases of police brutality against unarmed black men? Did they defend Trayvon Martin who was stalked for wearing a hoodie shortly before he was shot and killed by a wannabe vigilante?

It’s like how they’re upset over the descriptions the MAGA hat-wearing Catholic Covington kids received from the press and celebrities. One of them has hired a lawyer and is threatening to sue a list of news outlets and celebrities for libel, which conservatives are cheering. This is being applauded by the same conservative news outlets that accused David Hogg and other survivors of the Parkland shooting of being “crisis actors.”

Conservatives are so good at selective outrage, they should put in a bottle and market it. I’m sure it taste like Kool-Aid.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

As a candidate, Donald Trump had a lot of praise for Vladimir Putin — and no business, he kept insisting, in Russia. These documents tell a different story.

When Michael Cohen, the president’s former lawyer and longtime fixer, testifies before Congress this week, one topic that is likely to be front and center is his work on Trump Moscow, the over-the-top luxury real estate venture he helped spearhead leading up to the election.

The development, which was never built, has already become a focus for special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into potential collusion between Trump and Russia during the 2016 campaign. And when Cohen was convicted last November of lying to Congress, it was over his false testimony that the deal had fizzled in January 2016, well before Trump emerged as the Republican nominee.

BuzzFeed News is today publishing a cache of internal Trump Organization documents that lay bare the secret negotiations that continued long after Cohen claimed the deal had been abandoned. The documents, many of which have been exclusively obtained by BuzzFeed News, reveal that — despite Trump’s claim that the development was never more than a passing notion — the effort to get the tower built was long-running, detail-oriented and directly entwined with the ups and downs of his campaign.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

Multiple supporters of President Donald Trump over the past couple of weeks have taken to Twitter to air their grievances about the president’s signature tax cut plan.

Even though the 2017 GOP tax cut is leading to spiking federal deficits thanks to its generous benefits to corporations, many middle-class Americans are winding up having to pay more because the bill eliminated multiple deductions used by middle-class families to lower their annual tax payments.

Among other things, the tax bill ended deductions for taxes paid to state and local governments, while massively increasing the amount of money you must donate to qualify for a charitable giving deduction.

Several Trump voters who have done their taxes are not happy about this and they’re letting both the president and the Republican Party hear it — check out some of their tweets below. ...

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

1488 ...

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

On Jan. 25, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton tweeted a “VOTER FRAUD ALERT” that quickly rocketed around the internet. Texas Secretary of State David Whitley, Paxton asserted, had discovered that approximately “95,000 individuals identified” as non-citizens are registered to vote in the state, “58,000 of whom have voted” in Texas elections.

Whitley promptly urged counties to begin purging these 95,000 people from their voter rolls, demanding proof of citizenship within 30 days or canceling their registrations. Donald Trump joined the action, tweeting on Jan. 27 that Whitley’s numbers “are just the tip of iceberg.” Voter fraud, Trump wrote, “is rampant. Must be stopped. Strong voter ID!”

Within days of Paxton’s alarming tweet, Whitley had substantially backtracked. The secretary of state quietly informed county officials that a “significant number” of people on the list are actually citizens. Texas Director of Elections Keith Ingram https://www.sos.texas.gov/elections/laws/advisory2019-02.shtml that these were “WEAK matches,” a “starting point” rather than a definitive list.

In Harris County alone, about 18,000 names were removed from the initial list of alleged non-citizens. Some county officials, however, had already begun to notify residents on that first list that they had 30 days to prove their citizenship or lose their ability to vote.

The situation in Texas is a mess. But it is a dangerous mess. Paxton, a notorious foe of voting rights, is creating chaos and confusion in order to justify a radical purge of Texas’ voter rolls. As three new lawsuits filed by an array of civil rights groups argue, this purge isn’t just slapdash and sloppy—it’s discriminatory and illegal.

Paxton and his allies are taking a page from Kris Kobach’s playbook of shock and awe: Toss out a wildly inflated claim of non-citizen voting, then use the ensuing panic to justify mass disenfranchisement. It is a dirty and duplicitous tactic. And thanks to America’s increasingly conservative judiciary, it might actually succeed.

Texas’ voter fraud pandemonium is actually a combination of Kobach’s two favorite moves: creating dubious lists of allegedly fraudulent voters to disenfranchise, and forcing people to prove citizenship in order to cast a ballot.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

While Trump's refusal to release his returns — something every party nominee and president has done for the last half century — has been controversial since 2016, once Democrats demand the returns it will become an intense controversy playing out on television and the front pages of newspapers.

That means that Republican officeholders will be forced to take a position, which they haven't really had to do before. And they'll be expected to defend the president's refusal to allow the public to know where he's getting money from, who he owes money to, and how far his financial interests extend.

Trump himself began in 2016 by saying he couldn’t release the returns since he was being audited. This was a lie. The IRS doesn’t prevent you from releasing your returns if you’re being audited, and it’s not like you have to keep something secret from them, since they already have the returns.

So imagine you're a Republican member of Congress. When this controversy becomes intense, you're going to have to answer two questions. The first is, should Trump release his returns? If they're going to be steadfastly loyal to Trump — which is the most important principle the GOP holds today — the answer they'll have to give is no. The second question is, why not?

And what will they say? Is there a reasonable answer to that question that you would be comfortable applying to any president of either party? Is any Republican able to say with a straight face that it's not in the public interest to know everything possible about the president's financial dealings? Would they have had the same answer if Hillary Clinton had refused to release her returns?

There is a dodge that Republicans can employ to those questions, and it's one I expect most of them will use: "That's up to the president. I'm more concerned with the vital issues facing the American people." In other words, please don't make me defend Trump.

But let’s be clear about one thing: There has never before in American history been a president for whom it was more important that his tax returns be opened to scrutiny.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

News broke Monday night that federal prosecutors issued a subpoena in https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/federal-prosecutors-issue-sweeping-subpoena-for-documents-from-trump-inaugural-committee-a-sign-of-a-deepening-criminal-probe/2019/02/04/b6382642-28e5-11e9-8eef-0d74f4bf0295_story.html?utm_term=.79dd42ae232f (the burgeoning investigation of the Trump inaugural committee). And we can add that one to the list of serious investigations President Trump has faced, including of himself, his campaign, his conduct as president, his business, his charity and his “university.”

Below, we break down the latest in each, along with how much trouble each could pose for Trump.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

(CNN) Federal prosecutors in New York have requested interviews in recent weeks with executives at the Trump Organization, according to people familiar with the matter, signaling a growing potential threat to President Donald Trump and those in his orbit from criminal investigations by the Manhattan US Attorney's office.

Trump and his legal team have long harbored concerns that investigations by New York federal prosecutors -- which could last throughout his presidency -- may ultimately pose more danger to him, his family and his allies than the inquiry by special counsel Robert Mueller, according to people close to Trump. Prosecutors' recent interest in executives at Trump's family company may intensify those fears.

New York federal prosecutors in recent months have undertaken at least two investigations into Trump-related entities. The first one, which CNN has reported stemmed from the office's case against Trump's former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, is examining possible campaign-finance violations by executives at the Trump Organization during the company's effort to reimburse Cohen for hush-money payments he made or orchestrated to silence women who claimed affairs with Trump. Trump has denied those affairs.

In the Cohen probe, one Trump Organization executive, chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg, was granted immunity by federal prosecutors to provide information concerning Cohen, CNN has reported.

The second investigation concerns the Trump inaugural committee and possible financial abuses related to the more than $100 million in donations raised for his inauguration, CNN has reported.

On Monday, prosecutors issued a sweeping subpoena to the committee, requesting documents related to virtually every donor or donation, attendee at a committee event, piece of paperwork related to the legal requirements attached to donations and even "the possibility of" donations made by foreign nationals.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

SOTU ...

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Senorman]

^But there was no collusion, lol.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump laced his State of the Union speech with puffed-up numbers and partial truths Tuesday as he hailed an “economic miracle,” warned of human traffickers flooding across the border and appeared to place Afghanistan in the Middle East instead of where it is, Asia.

Trump used information selectively in claiming a drop in drug prices not seen in half a century and promised the nation it would see bountiful benefits from a trade deal that hasn’t been approved, might not be and in any event makes only modest changes from the status quo.

For her part, Democrat Stacey Abrams reflected a recent and misleading talking point by her party when she slammed the Trump administration for choosing to “cage children” at the border, ignoring a practice also employed by the Obama administration to hold migrant children in facilities with chain-link fencing.

Here’s a look at some of the statements from State of the Union night: