(Sarah Huckabee) Sanders On Vicious Trump Tweet: President Fights Fire With Fire

After the President sent out a vicious tweet attacking MSNBC host Mika Brzezinski and claiming she had a “face lift,” deputy White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders defended President Donald Trump, saying he “fights fire with fire.”

“Look, I don’t think that the president’s ever been someone who gets attacked and doesn’t push back. There have been an outrageous number of personal attacks, not just to him but to frankly everyone around him. People on that show have personally attacked me many times, this is a president who fights fire with fire,” Sanders said on Fox News. “And certainly will not be allowed to be bullied by liberal media or liberal elites within the media or Hollywood or anywhere else.”

When asked whether this type of personal attack was necessary, Sanders said what’s “necessary is to push back against unnecessary attacks on the President both personally” and claimed there have been “outrageous attacks” “day in and day out” on “Morning Joe” against her and Trump.

“I have seen far worse things come out of that show. Again, directed not just at the President, but everyone around him, personal attacks, mean, hateful attacks. Again this President is not going to sit back and not push back and fight fire with fire and that’s exactly what he did today,” she said.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/sanders-president-fights-fire-with-fire?utm_content=bufferffa8c&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

Edit: Amended name in title to avoid confusion.

Jack Abramoff Sought Meeting With Trump for Congos Leader

WASHINGTON—Former lobbyist Jack Abramoff unsuccessfully sought to arrange a meeting between the president of the Republic of the Congo and then-U.S. President-elect Donald Trump late last year, according to a new Justice Department filing.

Mr. Abramoff, who pleaded guilty in 2006 to felony federal corruption charges related to his Washington lobbying work, wrote in a disclosure filing received by the Justice Department on Wednesday that he attempted to use his contacts to get Congolese President Denis Sassou-Nguesso a meeting with Mr. Trump in Florida.

Mr. Nguesso flew to Palm Beach, Fla., in late December to try to secure a meeting with Mr. Trump, the filing stated. Had it taken place, the meeting would have been a breach of diplomatic protocol since President Barack Obama was still in office. The State Department confirmed that Mr. Nguesso entered the country but declined to comment further.

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In the disclosure forms, Mr. Abramoff said he flew to Palm Beach to try to facilitate a meeting or a phone call between Mr. Nguesso and Mr. Trump, enlisting Republican Rep. Dana Rohrabacher of California to help. Mr. Rohrabacher confirmed in an interview last month that he had tried to assist to Mr. Nguesso in his visit. A spokesman for Mr. Rohrabacher didn’t respond to a request for further comment.

https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/jack-abramoff-sought-meeting-with-trump-for-congos-leader-1498251832

JACK ABRAMOFF!!! WTF!!

FBI Official Wont Say Whether Trump Acted As an

“Unwitting Agent” for Russia

A top FBI official investigating the Russian cyberattacks on the 2016 election would not say Wednesday whether President Donald Trump acted as an “unwitting agent” of the Kremlin during his presidential campaign.

Bill Priestap, assistant director of the FBI’s counterintelligence division, testified before the Senate intelligence committee that Moscow “employed a multifaceted approach intended to undermine confidence in our democratic process,” including efforts to “discredit” Hillary Clinton and help elect Trump.

Citing Priestap’s description of Russian efforts to “sow discord” in the United States, Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) asked Priestap about the term “unwitting agent,” meaning an official duped into doing the bidding of a foreign power.
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The exchange recalled an August 2016 op-ed by former CIA Director Michael Morell endorsing Clinton. “Mr. Trump has also taken policy positions consistent with Russian, not American, interests—endorsing Russian espionage against the United States, supporting Russia’s annexation of Crimea and giving a green light to a possible Russian invasion of the Baltic States,” Morrell wrote. “In the intelligence business, we would say that Mr. Putin had recruited Mr. Trump as an unwitting agent of the Russian Federation.”

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/06/fbi-official-wont-say-whether-trump-acted-as-an-unwitting-agent-for-russia/

I don't know if this has been posted before, but this is a great timeline on Russia and Trump.

How Trump Can Win and We Can Lose the Media War

In the dust storm kicked up last week over former FBI Director James Comey’s testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee, a big story seems to have been obscured: that of Reality Winner, the young defense contractor who slid a classified National Security Agency document to The Intercept website.

Putting aside Winner’s motives, of which I haven’t a clue, the document described an effort by Russian military intelligence hackers not just to steal and float negative information about Hillary Clinton, and thus attempt to tilt our election to Trump, but to penetrate our voting software, the very heart of our democracy, presumably to change votes.

The document doesn’t say if they succeeded or not, but this is big stuff — headline stuff. Instead, to the extent the story was covered at all, it was reported as the story of a treasonous government leaker — that bane of the president’s existence. Score one for Trump.

http://billmoyers.com/story/trump-can-win-can-lose-media-war/

A long read, but worth it. The author delves into many reasons for Trump's continuing support among certain groups of voters.

And here's another interesting question concerning Sessions.

I wish I'd been on this flight.

Mr. Comey and All the Presidents Lies

Trump, furious and frustrated, gears up to punch back at Comey testimony

Alone in the White House in recent days, President Trump — frustrated and defiant — has been spoiling for a fight, according to his confidants and associates.

Glued even more than usual to the cable news shows that blare from the televisions in his private living quarters, or from the 60-inch flat screen he had installed in his cramped study off the Oval Office, he has fumed about “fake news.” Trump has seethed as his agenda has stalled in Congress and the courts. He has chafed against the pleas for caution from his lawyers and political advisers, tweeting whatever he wants, whenever he wants.

And on Thursday, the president will come screen-to-screen with the former FBI director he fired, James B. Comey, who has consumed, haunted and antagonized him by overseeing an expanding Russia investigation that the president slammed as a “witch hunt.”
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“He’s infuriated at a deep-gut, personal level that the elite media has tolerated [the Russia story] and praised Comey,” former House speaker Newt Gingrich said. “He’s not going to let some guy like that smear him without punching him as hard as he can.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/politics/trump-furious-and-frustrated-will-join-allies-in-attacking-comey-testimony/2017/06/06/171e6d00-4acf-11e7-9669-250d0b15f83b_story.html

Hang onto your hats, folks. I don't know how this is going to go down, but I have a feeling we're going to see something the likes of which we've never seen before with Trump live tweeting during Comey’s testimony.

Final words of script for undelivered JFK speech.