June 30, 2017

Does Robert Mueller need to pay Mika and Joe a visit?

By Jennifer Rubin June 30 at 2:00 PM

Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough accomplished two things with their op-ed and “Morning Joe” appearance Friday responding to the president’s vulgar Thursday tweets. First, they successfully put President Trump’s mental health front and center. Second, they added a new legal issue for Trump’s fleet of lawyers to puzzle over.

As for the president’s psyche, Brzezinski and Scarborough wrote, “America’s leaders and allies are asking themselves yet again whether this man is fit to be president. We have our doubts, but we are both certain that the man is not mentally equipped to continue watching our show, ‘Morning Joe.’ ” On air, they focused on Trump’s mental state again. Brzezinski said she was “very concerned” about what it says about the president. Scarborough recalled an account from a senior member of Congress, who told him that in front of 20 congressmen gathered to talk about health care, the president went on an unhinged, angry rant involving Brzezinski. She observed that his “fragile, impetuous ego” leads him to be “so easily played by a TV news host.” Scarborough suggested people in the White House are “getting more concerned about his emotional state.” As he has before, Scarborough suggested there has been a change, a deterioration in his personality over the years. Guest Donny Deutsch said flat out, “He is not of sound mind.”

Whether it was intentional or not, the TV hosts successfully turned the table on Trump, in perhaps the most effective response to his tweeting to date. However, until his own party begins to rebuke him formally and question his ability to perform his duties, this remains a drag on his popularity but not a threat to his presidency.

Even more important, Brzezinski and Scarborough raised a new, troubling allegation. Scarborough recounted that White House aides allegedly called him that to say that a negative story would run in the National Enquirer about them but if they called to apologize, Trump could have the story pulled. The president denied the charge in a tweet (what else?), claiming, “Watched low rated Morning Joe for first time in long time. FAKE NEWS. He called me to stop a National Enquirer article. I said no! Bad show.” Scarborough shot back, “Yet another lie. I have texts from your top aides and phone records. Also, those records show I haven’t spoken with you in many months.”

more
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2017/06/30/does-robert-mueller-need-to-pay-mika-and-joe-a-visit/

June 30, 2017

Trump-fleeing U.S. couple looks forward to 'mild' winters in new home Halifax

Published Friday, June 30, 2017 12:16PM EDT

After Donald Trump was elected U.S. president, a lot of Americans vowed to move to Canada. But a South Carolina couple is actually going ahead and doing it.

Heather and Robin Vargas are packing up their belongings and travelling more than 2,600 kilometres to a new home in Halifax in December.

Heather told CTV News Channel she and her husband began making plans to leave the day after Trump won. They began with reading up on the logistics of emigrating, then started reading about what Canada and Canadians are like.

“We did more research into Canada as a whole and we quickly fell in love with the country,” Vargas told CTV from Charleston, S.C.

The couple decided that Canadians’ values aligned with their own, unlike those of President Trump, his administration and his supporters.

more
http://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/trump-fleeing-u-s-couple-looks-forward-to-mild-winters-in-new-home-halifax-1.3483766

June 30, 2017

Rhode Island Joins List Of States Defying Bogus 'Election Integrity' Commission

By MATT SHUHAM Published JUNE 30, 2017 2:06 PM

The governor of Rhode Island said Friday that the state will not comply with a request from President Donald Trump’s shady “election integrity” commission that all 50 states hand over sensitive voter information to the federal government. The state would, she said, share publicly available information.

“No,” Rhode Island would not comply with the government’s full request, Gov. Gina Raimondo (D) said in an interview on MSNBC. “First of all, I think this is an alarming request. I don’t know where it’s coming from. We know that voter fraud is not widespread.”

“Our secretary of state last night put out a statement saying that we won’t be complying and we’re only going to share information which is otherwise publicly available,” she continued. “And I support her in that position.”

Kobach requested that states hand over a slew of information including the last four digits of voters’ Social Security numbers, felony convictions, military status and more.

more
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/rhode-island-will-not-give-election-integrity-commission-data

June 30, 2017

Cancel August Recess? Senator Takes Case to Trump

Georgia’s David Perdue also sent letter to Mitch McConnell

Posted Jun 30, 2017 1:51 PM

A Republican senator leading the call to cancel the August recess is taking his case to President Donald Trump.

Sen. David Perdue of Georgia led Friday’s letter to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell signed by 10 GOP senators saying that there is simply too much unfinished business to take the traditional extended break in August.

“We must complete the first phase of Obamacare repeal and replace. Next, we have to pass a budget that serves as a reconciliation vehicle for reforming our outdated tax code. Before September 30th, we must agree on an appropriation that responsibly funds the government. Also, we must deal with our debt limit before that approximate date,” the 10 senators wrote to the Kentucky Republican. “If we successfully navigate those priorities, we can finally get to our once in a generation opportunity on tax reform.”

Senate GOP leaders and a number of senators up for re-election in 2018 are unlikely to want to spend additional time at the Capitol building, but Perdue planned to discuss the legislative calendar and the call to curtail the August recess during a meeting with Trump on Friday at the White House, a Senate aide said.

more
http://www.rollcall.com/news/trump-perdue-discussing-canceling-august-recess/

June 30, 2017

Former WH photographer uses photos to demonstrate Obama's respect for women

Former WH photographer uses photos to demonstrate Obama’s respect for women after Trump’s insulting tweet about an MSNBC host



RARE
30 JUN 2017 AT 11:56 ET

Former White House photographer Pete Souza, once again, used photographs and his Instagram page to troll President Donald Trump after he tweeted out an insulting comment about MSNBC host Mika Brzezinski.

-snip-

The backlash to his tweets was swift, but it was Souza’s photo series, which powerfully portrayed the stark contrast between Trump and former President Barack Obama, that had the deepest impact.

Souza posted a series of five photographs on his Instagram page and labeled each of them “Respect for women.” Each photograph portrayed Obama with a woman or women and explained the story behind each photo.







Souza has used his photos and Instagram page repeatedly to troll the Trump administration.

In May, after the Trump’s hand holding (or not holding) incident, the former White House photographer posted a photo of Barack and Michelle Obama holding hands and simply captioned it, “Holding hands.”



more
http://www.rawstory.com/2017/06/former-wh-photographer-uses-photos-to-demonstrate-obamas-respect-for-women-after-trumps-insulting-tweet-about-an-msnbc-host/

June 30, 2017

Senate Republicans Don't Give a Damn About Your Health

‘ROOT AND BRANCH’
Senate Republicans Don’t Give a Damn About Your Health

Is there even a single prominent instance when conservatives have supported broadening access to health care for American citizens?

MICHAEL TOMASKY
06.30.17 1:00 AM ET

So a new Republican Senate health bill might land today. Or it might take a little while longer. They’re considering… things. They might even scale back the tax cuts.

Whatever. Since we’re headed into a short recess here, when they’re all going home to not hold town hall meetings for a bill with 12 percent support, let’s take a step back and assess. Whatever Republicans try to do to this bill will be for two reasons and two reasons only: one, to get it some more votes; and two, to finagle it a better Congressional Budget Office score. Because there’s a number at which their cruelty sounds not quite as cruel as people expect of them. If “only” 16 million are kicked off insurance in the new version, it will be hailed as moderate.

But we can be sure that none of the changes Senate Republicans are about to make will be for the purpose of ensuring that Americans have better health care. God forbid that. They don’t want that. Giving people better health care isn’t why they’re doing this. If you look back over the history of this country, I don’t think you can find a single prominent instance when conservatives have supported broadening access to health care for American citizens. A lot of Republicans—nearly half in both the Senate and the House—voted to create Medicare and Medicaid back in 1965, but that was when the GOP still had liberals. The conservatives were all against it.

Eight years later, Congress passed a big bill creating Health Maintenance Organizations (HMOs). They have developed a mixed track record over the years, HMOs, but at the time, it was a Ted Kennedy bill that was designed to give consumers greater choice. This passed the Senate 69-25 in May 1973, and the 25, sure enough, were all conservatives—Bob Dole, Strom Thurmond, Jesse Helms, and the like (a few were Southern Democrats, still). Two decades after that we had Hillarycare, which Dole said he would filibuster—a semi-shocking deployment of that tactic at that time—and that effort was killed off.

more
http://www.thedailybeast.com/senate-republicans-dont-give-a-damn-about-your-health

June 30, 2017

Freedom Caucus Demands Big Welfare Cuts

June 30, 2017 at 9:29 am EDT By Taegan Goddard

Vox: “Congressional conservatives see an opportunity to push for more than $200 billion in cuts to welfare programs, including Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) and food stamps (SNAP), that serve as a safety net for the nation’s most vulnerable population — on top of cuts already being pursued in the health care bill.”

“This group of conservatives, the House Freedom Caucus, recently emboldened by extracting key concessions from Trump in order to pass his health care bill through the House last month, is feeling the strength of its leverage over the party — it knows that without its members’ votes, the budget resolution is doomed, and with it, for the next year at least, any hope of passing tax reform through the Senate on a strictly party-line vote.”

###

https://politicalwire.com/2017/06/30/freedom-caucus-demands-big-welfare-cuts/

June 30, 2017

Trump's crude tweets: Would anyone else be fired?

By BARBARA ORTUTAY
Today

NEW YORK (AP) — If President Donald Trump were anyone else, he’d be fired, or at least reprimanded, for his latest tweets attacking a female TV host, social media and workplace experts say.

And if he were to look for a job, the experts say, these and past tweets would raise red flags for companies doing social media background checks, an increasingly common practice as tweets and Facebook posts become a daily, sometimes hourly part of our lives.

Of course, Trump is anything but typical.

Still, experts say it’s a mistake to think that because the president is getting away with calling a man “Psycho Joe” and saying a woman was “bleeding badly from a face-lift” and had “low I.Q.,” regular people would get away with it, too.

“Mr. Trump would be fired for his tweets of today, and nearly every day,” said Mike Driehorst, a social media expert at the marketing agency Weaving Influence. “Most companies have a thin skin when it comes to public criticism and media reports.”

more
https://www.apnews.com/3b7403ceccd6422dbe1e7014398b43fa

June 30, 2017

EXCLUSIVE Jared Kushner Told Joe Scarborough: Talk to President Trump About 'Enquirer' ...

Source: The Daily Beast




EXCLUSIVE

Jared Kushner Told Joe Scarborough: Talk to President Trump About ‘Enquirer’ Dirt
The president’s son-in-law advised the ‘Morning Joe’ host to speak to the president directly about an upcoming tabloid ‘hit piece.’

LACHLAN MARKAY
ASAWIN SUEBSAENG
06.30.17 11:57 AM ET

On Friday, MSNBC hosts Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough made the explosive claim that three of President Donald Trump’s most senior White House aides “warned” the couple that the tabloid The National Enquirer would publish dirt on them unless they “begged” the president to intervene.

The Morning Joe co-hosts declined to name the multiple White House officials involved in this bizarre, ongoing feud. But one of those “top White House staff members” was senior advisor and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, two White House officials confirmed to The Daily Beast.

According to these officials, Kushner and Scarborough had spoken “many weeks ago” regarding a then upcoming negative Enquirer article on Scarborough and Brzezinski. Scarborough had “calmly sought” advice from Kushner, who “recommended he speak with the president.”

But White House sources’ accounts of the conversation differed from Scarborough’s description and suggestions of more sinister interactions. No hostile threat or attempt at blackmail was made, according to these officials.

Read more: http://www.thedailybeast.com/jared-kushner-told-joe-scarborough-talk-to-president-trump-about-enquirer-dirt

June 30, 2017

Will Obamacare outlast Trump? The odds improved this week.

David Lauter

In the heady days just after their surprise victory in November, Republicans talked optimistically of repealing Obamacare in January.

After all, they said, a previous Republican-controlled Congress already had passed a repeal bill, which President Obama vetoed. Now, they could simply pass it again and have it on President Trump’s desk the day he was sworn in.

January became March, and March became May, and July will begin with the Affordable Care Act still the law of the land. Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) direly warned that if his caucus failed to reach agreement soon, they might have no choice but to negotiate with Democrats for a deal.

-snip-

SOLVING THE PROBLEM BY MAKING IT BIGGER

The problem for Republicans is that at each step along the legislative way, the task of repealing Obamacare has gotten bigger.

The first major leap in complexity came in December. At that point, Republican leaders had a strategy with appealing simplicity: Repeal the law now, promise to come up with a replacement later.

more
http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-essential-politics-20170630-story.html