I’ve never had the FBI come after me, but I imagine it’s terrifying.
Rep. Jose Serrano (D-N.Y.) asked [acting head of the FBI, Andrew] McCabe whether he’d been asked for a loyalty oath by Trump, as Comey has said he was, and how he would reply.
“I have taken an oath already to the United States of America to protect and defend the Constitution. That is the only oath I will take, so that’s really not an issue for me,” McCabe said. He added that it wouldn’t be appropriate “in this forum” to discuss his conversations with the president.
As in past testimony, McCabe did dispute claims by Trump and other officials that morale at the FBI suffered under Comey.
“Director Comey enjoyed a great relationship with the men and women of the FBI. So, his removal took many many people by surprise. It was a shock. It’s something that we’ve all had to come to terms with,” McCabe said.
“We understand it is the president’s privilege to remove the FBI director or any appointee, whenever he chooses to do so. … It’s been my challenge to keep people focused on the mission during this time of transition.”
Do you think Trump is smart enough to understand what it means to have the Bureau this mad at you?
Trump probably doesn’t realize it yet.
But Hillary certainly appreciates the level of irrational hostility they are capable of
Wen Ho Lee could tell you about the irrational hostility too.
Amazing how HCR has flown under the radar.
Well its gotten the attention of this guy:
Obama: ‘This Bill Will Do You Harm’
https:/www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/06/this-is-the-obamacare-speech-obama-never-gave/5
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“The Senate bill, unveiled today, is not a health care bill,” the former president wrote in a Facebook post. “It’s a massive transfer of wealth from middle-class and poor families to the richest people in America. It hands enormous tax cuts to the rich and to the drug and insurance industries, paid for by cutting health care for everybody else. Those with private insurance will experience higher premiums and higher deductibles, with lower tax credits to help working families cover the costs, even as their plans might no longer cover pregnancy, mental health care, or expensive prescriptions. Discrimination based on pre-existing conditions could become the norm again. Millions of families will lose coverage entirely.”
And here’s the money shot:
“Simply put, if there’s a chance you might get sick, get old, or start a family – this bill will do you harm,” he added. “And small tweaks over the course of the next couple weeks, under the guise of making these bills easier to stomach, cannot change the fundamental meanness at the core of this legislation.”
Now if this doesn’t wake people up, nothing will.
Time for a simple tv add that shows the current deductible will double under Trumpcare.
Yes, isn’t it? It’s almost as if this study drumbeat of Trump,Russia was designed to hide the fact that Obamacare is being gutted and neolibs don’t really want to stop that, or the gutting of Civil service that’s also proceeding. But that couldn’t be true, could it? No! The Democratic Party is the ordinary man’s friend, isn’t it? They couldn’t be colluding to transfer all the wealth to the 1%, could they?
This new emphasis on the college educated suburbanites (who get health care insurance from their employers) wouldn’t have anything to do with it. Would it?
The Democratic Party is the ordinary man’s friend, isn’t it? They couldn’t be colluding to transfer all the wealth to the 1%, could they?
http://theintercept.com/2017/06/23/democratic-lobbyists-donald-trump-mottur-podesta-comcast-prudenti
al/
Here is one answer.
Not one House Democrat voted for the ACHA. They have taken opportunities to communicate their oppositions, and the facts of the Bill, in all media.
The very first day McConnell unveiled his deadly Bill, Senate Democrats held the floor all night to detail their displeasure, itemizing the ways the Bill would maim and kill Americans, particularly those with middle and lower incomes, denying them health care and driving them into bankruptcy.
Your critique here is so counterfactual it’s bizarre.
You might want to take a refresher course on how bills are passed before blaming the D̶e̶m̶o̶c̶r̶a̶t̶i̶c̶ ̶P̶a̶r̶t̶y̶ Party That Hates White Men for the AHCA, and the lack of LibrulMediaTM coverage of that bill.
Also: needs more Clinton outrage.
Are you sure you can’t tie Hillary Clinton to lack of coverage and potential passage of the AHCA? Perhaps Killery, in her desire for a shooting war with Russia, has given paid speeches to Republican Congressmen on how to get the Russia Trump story aired on television while they’ve quietly worked on the AHCA?
I’m sure there are some Moon of Alabama posts and Billmon tweets that you could link to in order to prove it.
And yet this morning, now that the bill is out and can be read, my regional news station, NECN, an affiliate of MSNBC, had a sizable story about it, not only noting that four Republicans said they couldn’t vote for it (not cruel enough), but pointing out key provisions that would harm millions of people, and reminding viewers that the CBO had yet to analyze the bill’s fiscal impact.
The TV talking heads need some meat on the bones to serve up to their audience. Now there’s a text, there’s texture.
There’s a lot of patting Addison McC on the back for negotiating some rapids he hasn’t run yet.
The polling on Trumpcare has been consistently abysmal, and no amount of hiding the ball (however masterfully) will change that. But what “the people” think won’t be the decisive factor in the fate of Trumpcare.
The Republicans have the votes to pass it if they maintain unity. They know it’s horribly unpopular. They know it’s going to cause widespread suffering and death. The know the Democrats are unified in opposition and will use the vote to go after them in 2018. Either that scares them off, or it doesn’t.
In a functioning democracy no policy so cruel and unpopular could ever pass. The Republicans seem to be betting they’ve done enough damage to democratic accountability that they can escape the consequences. We’ll soon find out if they’re right.
True. Plus the orgasm from saving taxes on Obamacare is unstoppable. Outweighs any number of deaths and hardship – – and they will come back for more later.
Virtually no mention on the news.
It’s incredible. And it’s not through lack of Democrats doing everything that they can to draw attention to the bill either. It’s frankly hard to understand how such a major bill with such far-reaching consequences could go so uncovered by the networks. Hopefully they make up for it now that the text of the bill is available.
Well, let’s not forget that the same people now complaining about the media not mentioning health care repeal, and that Russia discussions are a distraction, were absolutely fine with the media constantly harping on -emails!- non stop during the election. ‘Worst candidate ever’ was a favorite, all while swallowing the Russia ‘drops’ with unrestrained glee. It turns out -emails!- was the mother of all distractions.
Dupes and fools. Yet now they want, once again, to tell us what is permitted to discuss.
There is no coming back from being a dupe to the Russians, and being a fool for disseminating propaganda for the alt right.
Traitors in their own small way.
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Trump has lived his entire life as a spoiled, privileged grandee, answerable only to his own whims. Couple that with an unhealthy, hedonistic obsession with his ego, even the hedge of morality doesn’t stand a chance in putting some boundaries around his behavior. As we’ve seen of his performance, being in the spotlight of the Presidency, the weight of the Office hasn’t given him any reason to change. In short, if that doesn’t scare him, why would the FBI?
I suspect Trump doesn’t care how mad he’s made the FBI, and what that might mean for his own hide because wealth and power tends to give people like this a buffer that the average person doesn’t have when it comes to federal law enforcement. Insulated by armies of lawyers and flunkies, with fall guys at the ready, they have a great ability to mitigate or even negate the impacts. I don’t think they worry like we would when the FBI comes calling.
I hope you realize that you could substitute Hillary Clinton for Trump in that post and it would be equally true.
With all due respect, if you did that, any reasonable person being honest would have to say such a statement wouldn’t make sense.
Another thought, this even more relevant to my real point: my opposition to Trump isn’t to achieve some political gain for Clinton or the democrats. There is none to be had.
My concern with Trump, as it should be for all of us, is the fact that this man is a threat to national security, period. And I don’t care if a Trump exit means President Pence. Trump in the Presidency is not a partisan issue.
Let me try it:
Hillary has lived her entire life as a spoiled, privileged grandee, answerable only to her own whims. (I find it difficult to find that true of any woman in the US, no matter how powerful. And especially anyone who took motherhood seriously.) FALSE
Couple that with an unhealthy, hedonistic obsession with her ego, even the hedge of morality doesn’t stand a chance in putting some boundaries around his behavior. As we’ve seen of her performance, being in the spotlight of the Presidency, the weight of the Office hasn’t given him any reason to change. In short, if that doesn’t scare him, why would the FBI? (The involvement of the FBI in Whitewater and succeeding investigations in the 1990s perceptibly did scare and anger Hillary Clinton, just on the matter of basic justice. She does care about appearances.) FALSE
I suspect Hillary doesn’t care how mad he’s made the FBI, and what that might mean for his own hide because wealth and power tends to give people like this a buffer that the average person doesn’t have when it comes to federal law enforcement. Insulated by armies of lawyers and flunkies, with fall guys at the ready, she has a great ability to mitigate or even negate the impacts. I don’t think she worries like we would when the FBI comes calling. (The GOP got to the Clintons through their Whitewater partners, association with Anthony Wiener’s wife to his scandal – mentioned in the ending days of the 2016 campaign – and even the suicide of Vince Foster; the FBI never delivered evidence of any of those GOP-backed scandals. The only evidence that the FBI delivered relative to Monica Lewinsky was the DNA evidence of stains on the blue dress that Linda Tripp, at Lucianne Goldberg’s suggestion, delivered to the investigating counsel Kenneth Starr.) Dramatically FALSE. I would love for Trump to be treated like Clinton was. But Trump gets off like Cosby.
The Voice has been compulsiveely obsessed with HRC bashing for a long long time, it has become very tiresome and boring.
Was it Voice the one who was predicting nuclear war if HRC won? Someone was, in nearly every comment thread.
/been lurking here since the summer
Not just him. Plus they believed the ACA was a neoliberal sell out to the insurance companies that did not help anybody, and should be repealed.
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Seeing that illustrates just how ridiculous the comparison is. Hillary didn’t come from wealth and power, and what wealth the Clintons have accumulated since then hasn’t been enough to prevent them from all kinds of investigations and being dragged through the mud, for sport even.
If Trump had gotten just half the treatment and scrutiny Hillary has, he might be in prison by now.
Of course she did! You apparently don’t know her home town.
HRC father was a Navy petty officer, career Navy.
Not exactly in the Fred Trump clss.
And RFK was a Navy Seaman, a radio operator.
It’s clear that Der Trumper isn’t smart enough to understand very much about anything, his success at being a conman and scammer notwithstanding. He is plainly a childish person of below average intelligence, who has some talent for showmanship.
In discussing the intellect of Hitler, Sebastian Haffner famously described him as “a dedicated reader of newspapers”. To Germans of the 1960s, this was a slam.
Trumper is a dedicated watcher of cable news–at best.
Have we not learned that the FBI is shockingly incompetent and/or blindly focused on their own petty agenda?
First, they inform the DNC about intensive and sustained computer hacking by contacting a random tech support guy and never initiating high-level meetings.
Then, after they dismiss the authenticity of a fake email placed by a foreign adversary, they still use that fake email as a pretense to do exactly what the foreign adversary wanted.
Then they violate FBI guidelines by discussing an ongoing case in a way designed to maximize inappropriate politically fallout.
Then they use their initial violation as an excuse to violate their guidelines again when the damage of the first violation begins to subside.
The FBI was overshadowed and outplayed by a second-rate power like the Russians to a humiliating, mortifying extent. I don’t know how any of them are still employed. The country and world would be a better place if their entire organization had been shuttered in 2015.
You’ve heard the saying “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”?
State internal security services often rely more on terror than competence….
Trump is clueless until his staff clues him. He picks up on transactional emotions and does not understand those with motives that depart from those of a profiteering businessman. Or that the context out of which government actions come are not all about him.
I have no idea what is in Trump’s mind, but I would probably loose all bladder control if they were that mission-driven. Perhaps that’s why he is making so many obvious mistakes and seems deranged?
That said, I think they already know that his mental condition is deteriorating…My neighbor has stage 2 dementia: Trump isn’t quite there yet, but he’s working on it. Combined with his realistic fear of the long-arm of the law (he knows his guilt as well as his children’s), its a pretty goddamn dangerous time in this country. I hope our FBI realizes how fast they need to move.
Combined with his realistic fear of the long-arm of the law (he knows his guilt as well as his children’s), …
I disagree. Why would he fear the law? How has the law ever, truly hurt him? Because he had to settle, or pay out fines/restitution? That’s nothing to rich people. Rich people like him don’t go to jail. And when they do it’s usually because they were screwing over other rich people(see Bernie Madoff).
>>Do you think Trump is smart enough to understand
it doesn’t matter how you finish that question, the answer is NO. Trump is dumber than it’s possible for a person to be.
“Trump is dumber than it’s possible for a person to be…”
I’d have to put some of his voters in this category as well.
Well, he does have some low cunning that’s served him well as a sleazeball deadbeat huckster with the money to hire vicious lawyers, but it’s a skill set ill-suited (to put it mildly) to his current circumstances.
For me it always comes back to Flynn. The FBI owns Flynn and the donald is not smart enough realize that the pardon will never cover up the collusion.
He likely thinks about it but figures he can simply tweet it all away or tell enough lies to obfuscate any problem. And his friends we heard singing his praises will support him. Shit it’s even on Facebook now and the assholes see nothing wrong with telling the boss what a great man he is.
That pathetically ludicrous Cabinet meeting where they all took turns groveling to his yuuuuuuge ego tells you all you need to know about the man and the lickspittles he surrounds himself with.
“Do you think Trump is smart enough to understand what it means to have the Bureau this mad at you?”
I do not think he is. I don’t see how any of the tactics he’s employed in business to skirt the law in the past could have prepared him for being in the position of having the FBI laser-focused on his misdeeds, past and present. It’s doubtful he can counter-sue the FBI, for instance.
The situation he finds himself in now isn’t something that will just go away if he throws money at it. If what is happening now were what he was used to, he wouldn’t be this obsessed with it. He’d be comfortable and unconcerned.
I got interviewed by the FBI right before this case.
It was an interesting experience. I got phone calls for three days straight from family with ‘they are looking for you’ warnings. Then the direct phone call, the almost, sort of, demand to meet me at my work ….’we prefer to come to where you work, it’s no problem, we’ll drive the extra hour’. I was building two houses, and the owners set up a picnic table in one of the garages for us. One did all the talking/questions, the other just watched…a living lie detector. First thing I said to them was that I was not going to lie, that I would freely discuss my sketchy past. I thought it was all very congenial. They even told me details about the case, and mentioned how everyone involved seemed to have disappeared. I asked to see their badges, so I could say I had seen gman badges.
But I also knew they were two deadly serious guys. And I knew my two friends were going away for a long long time. I made it very clear that just because I had committed crimes, and that even though they (the FBI) thought I was a filthy hippie, it did not mean for one second I tolerated traitors.
Here I am, 40 years later…and I have not changed. Trump is a traitor. He sold America out for cash..just like Daulton and Chris.
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Fascinating story! I daresay those G-men sized you up pretty fast and could tell you were being straight with them — no doubt a welcome change from the sort of evasion, weaseling, and outright lying they would normally encounter.
And yeh, our Traitor in Chief sold out this country, but I doubt he’ll be going away for any length of time, alas.
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And DJT’s facilitators like Mitch McConnell would be??
Let’s not forget that Republicans were briefed on that very packet.
Like Digby says….I feel sick.
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That was my point, McConnell behavior in particular.
I can tell you from experience Republican voters love to talk about Shakespeare in the Park – anything to do with Russia, not so much.
Putin is not such a bad guy after all, now that he is helping the Orthodox churches proselytize.