Bob Woodward fires back after Kushner claims he has his own audio tapes: ‘I report accurately’

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Bob Woodward on Tuesday dismissed a veiled threat from White House adviser Jared Kushner, who claimed to have audio tapes of the veteran journalist.

In an interview on the Today Show, Kushner was asked about comments he made during an interview with Woodward. According to Woodward, Kushner can be heard on tape calling former members of the Trump administration “overconfident idiots.”

Kushner revealed that both men had recorded the interview, and suggested that Woodward’s account was false. Continue reading.

Promoting Fake Conspiracies, Roger Stone Warns He Will ‘Monitor’ 2020 Voting

Trump confidant Roger Stone is pushing conspiracy theories about voter fraud in the 2020 election and suggesting he might launch an effort to “carefully monitor” voting on Election Day. 

Stone floated the plan in a September 14 article published on his website where he responded to widespread attention given to his claim that a Donald Trump victory would be the only legitimate outcome to the 2020 election and that if Trump loses, he should consider imposing martial law or using other draconian measures in order to stay in power. 

Trump recently commuted a 40-month prison sentence that was handed down to Stone after he was convicted of lying to Congress and tampering with witnesses as part of special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into 2016 election interference. Namely, Stone lied to Congress about his contacts with WikiLeaks, which released hacked emails with the aim of boosting Trump’s prospects. In the weeks leading up to the commutation, Stone made a number of media appearances where he asked Trump to grant him clemency and said that in exchange, he could be a more effective campaigner for the president’s 2020 reelection efforts. Continue reading.

Let’s break down this incredibly stupid Trump campaign email that’s almost impossible to fathom: analysis

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Let’s take a look at a Trump-Pence campaign fundraising email, because we could all use a laugh.

Friend,

For MONTHS the Fake News polls have shown Sleepy Joe ahead of your President in key battleground states.

The lying media doesn’t want to upset their Democrat Partners, so in a recent poll, they’re still reporting I’m down a few points. Ridiculous. They’re trying to TRICK the American People into thinking I have no chance of winning, but WE know that couldn’t be further from the truth.

It’s going to be an uphill battle to win these critical states, and I am counting on YOU to step up and help ensure a MASSIVE VICTORY. I need you to contribute to the Official Battleground State Fund […]

Please contribute ANY AMOUNT TODAY to the Official Battleground State Fund and your gift will be 600%-matched.

Let’s break this down, why don’t we? Continue reading.

Scientific American Makes First Presidential Endorsement In 175 Years

Scientific American was first published in New York on Aug. 28, 1845. Articles included one on the properties of zinc, another on improving railroad cars to make them both safer and more comfortable, and one was on a horse that navigated to the city to find its own way to a blacksmith. That was in the early days of the James Polk administration. Since then, the publishers of Scientific American have not felt compelled to make an endorsement in any election, including those involving a candidate named “Lincoln.” But after 175 years, the oldest continuously published monthly magazine in the United States has decided that there’s an existential threat to both parts of its title; a threat to “America” and “science” great enough to take a step into politics.

For the just released October issue, Scientific American has endorsed Joe Biden for president of the United States, and they don’t hold back on explaining why.

The evidence and the science show that Donald Trump has badly damaged the U.S. and its people—because he rejects evidence and science. The most devastating example is his dishonest and inept response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which cost more than 190,000 Americans their lives by the middle of September.

Trump’s handling of the pandemic is spectacularly bad. How bad? If Trump had achieved the same rate of infections and deaths as Justin Trudeau in Canada, the death toll in the United States would be 80,000 instead of 200,000. Had Trump tackled things as well as Angela Merkel did, with overrun France and Italy on her borders, the U.S. toll would have been 37,000. And had Trump genuinely taken to heart the lessons that South Korea learned when fighting COVID-19 weeks earlier and done things as well as Moon Jae-in, the number of dead would have been just 2,300. Nothing was going to stop COVID-19 from entering the United States, but Trump really could have prevented it from being a national disaster. He didn’t. On purpose. Continue reading.

Bipartisan House group unveils $1.5 trillion coronavirus relief plan

Problem Solvers Caucus offers compromise on unemployment, state and local aid sticking points, but leaders may not embrace

The 50-member, bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus on Tuesday released a $1.5 trillion COVID-19 aid package that they hope will help push congressional leaders and the White House toward a similar compromise.

The measure also gives the caucus members, many of whom are considered vulnerable for reelection this cycle, an opportunity to tell voters they offered a compromise and deflect blame for potential inaction on a new aid bill before the elections.

In arriving at $1.5 trillion, the Problem Solvers plan is almost exactly halfway between the $3.4 trillion bill the House passed in May and a $300 billion proposal Senate Republicans offered on the floor last week. Their proposal, however, includes automatic triggers based on hospitalization rates and progress towards vaccine development that could increase the cost by as much as $400 billion or reduce it by up to $200 billion. Continue reading.

Pelosi: House will stay in session until agreement is reached on coronavirus relief

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Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Tuesday announced that the House will remain in session until the parties have an agreement on another round of emergency coronavirus relief. 

In a conference call with the House Democratic Caucus — the first since the chamber returned from a long summer recess — Pelosi indicated she isn’t willing to accept a “skinny” legislative package, but told her troops the chamber’s calendar will be extended until an agreement is sealed, according to sources on the call. 

“We have to stay here until we have a bill,” Pelosi told lawmakers. Continue reading.

Washington Republican goes on profane rant after newspaper reports on her conspiracy theories

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Correspondent Daniel Walters received a profane and homophobic response after reporting on a Washington state representative pushing conspiracy theories on Facebook.

“State Rep. Jenny Graham (R-Spokane) called me on my cellphone the day the Inlander published my story about her unwittingly linking to conspiracy theory posts on Facebook. I called her back immediately — while she was still leaving a voicemail — and was greeted with two blasts of profanity,” Walters reported for the Spokane Inlander.

“Daniel, you lying piece of sh*t. You’ve done it. You have started it. Don’t you ever call me again. Do you understand? Don’t you ever — and you tell your buddies not to call me either. It’s on,” she said ominously. “If you think for one minute you’re going to pull this crap and you’re going to walk away from it, you’re nuts.” Continue reading.

Trump facing ‘internal backlash’ from his own campaign over indoor Vegas rally: report

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President Donald Trump’s defiant decision to hold an indoor rally in Las Vegas during the COVID-19 pandemic didn’t just anger the president’s usual critics, but also some of his own campaign staff.

The New York Times reports that Trump’s indoor rally over the weekend sparked “a wave of internal backlash, including from a top Trump adviser who said the president was playing a game of Russian roulette in holding the indoor rally.”

The Trump adviser, who wished to remain anonymous, told the Times that Trump could hurt himself politically if there’s a surge in COVID-19 cases in Las Vegas over the next several weeks. Continue reading.

Former NSC Aide Vindman Says Trump Is Putin’s ‘Useful Idiot’

Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, the decorated war hero who retired from the Army in July after calling out “intimidation” from the White House, said in an interview published Monday morning that Trump is a “useful idiot” for Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Donald Trump fired Vindman from the National Security Council in February, a move largely seen as retaliation for Vindman’s congressional testimony during the House impeachment investigation.

“President Trump should be considered to be a useful idiot and a fellow traveler, which makes him an unwitting agent of Putin,” Vindman said in an interview with the Atlantic’s editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg. Continue reading.

‘Trump’s handmaiden’: Former federal prosecutor explains the many ways AG Bill Barr twisted ‘the law to protect the president’

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To read Part 1 of this article, go here. 

None of the founders of the country conceivably imagined that if the Attorney General is indeed the creature of the President, he would be ill-equipped to investigate, much less prosecute the President or his associates for wrongdoing, either before or during his presidency. It obviously didn’t occur to Hamilton, Madison or Jay that we might one day have a rogue President like Donald Trump with a life history of being one step ahead of the law, and little or no regard for presidential or constitutional norms.

Barr enjoys the dubious decision of being the most controversial Attorney General in history. He testified in his confirmation hearings that he would make law enforcement decisions based on the facts and the law “not on politics.” But, he quickly broke his promise and emerged as a political apparatchik, leaving a trail of decisions favorable to Trump and his political cronies that appear to have ignored both the facts and the law, and raise serious questions as to whether he has any independence from the President at all. Indeed, Barr not only embraced, but bedded down with, the controversial doctrine of the unitary executive. In a devastating Washington Postop-ed, Obama Attorney General Eric Holder found Barr “unfit” to hold the office because he failed to distance himself from the President:

Barr made the outlandish suggestion that Congress cannot entrust anyone but the President himself to execute the law. In Barr’s view, sharing executive power with anyone ‘beyond the control of the President,’ [emphasis Holder’s]… presumably including a semi-independent Cabinet member’ [the Attorney General], contravenes the Framers’ clear intent to vest that power in a single person.’ This is a stunning declaration … revealing of Barr’s own intent: to serve not at a careful remove from politics, as his office demands, but as an instrument of politics — under the direct “control” of President Trump.

Continue reading.