I had to chuckle after Trump's proof-free proclamation of widespread voter fraud, news just came out that one of his closest advisors (Bannon) and his daughter Tiffany are both illegally registered to vote in 2 different states.

^^
Me Too!

Telcoman

It gets funnier. According to the Washington Post today, both Jared Kushner (Trump advisor/Ivanka's husband) and Press Secretary Sean Spicer are also illegally registered to vote in 2 states. Perhaps Mr. Trump's inner circle's behavior helps explain why he feels so strongly that there's so much voter fraud.

Note, too, the fact that felony charges were filed back in November against a Trump supporter in Iowa for voting twice.

http://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/ ... /92892042/

Bubba1 wrote:It gets funnier. According to the Washington Post today, both Jared Kushner (Trump advisor/Ivanka's husband) and Press Secretary Sean Spicer are also illegally registered to vote in 2 states. Perhaps Mr. Trump's inner circle's behavior helps explain why he feels so strongly that there's so much voter fraud.

So they were both registered to vote in two states, that doesn't prove intent to commit fraud. Do you have proof they voted in both states? I recently moved from Delaware to Florida, and registered to vote in my new home state. Until the officials in Delaware received the change notice from Florida and updated their records, I too was registered to vote in two states.

Yet that double registration is exactly one of the items Trump is claiming as evidence that voter fraud against him actually occurred. His claim is one that since you are double registered, Rogue, you are guilty of felony voter fraud AND that you voted for Hillary Clinton using both registrations. His claims are fabricated lies and he needs to be more strongly confronted regarding all the lies he and his underlings continue to spew.

^^^^^^

I don't think it is actually illegal to be registered to vote in more than one state?
What is illegal is to actually vote in more than one state.
You can correct me if I'm wrong

Telcoman

No, it's not illegal to be registered in multiple locations since taking voters off rolls is a function of local registrars and secretaries of state, not the individual voter. If you don't tell the last registrar that you moved, how would they know to take you off their rolls? The same applies to removing people who have died. The registrar either needs to be notified with proof of death or wait for at least one election cycle of inactivity for a name to be taken off.

Trump is fraudulently claiming those people did vote and that every one of them voted for the Democratic candidate.

Rogue One wrote:So they were both registered to vote in two states, that doesn't prove intent to commit fraud. Do you have proof they voted in both states? I recently moved from Delaware to Florida, and registered to vote in my new home state. Until the officials in Delaware received the change notice from Florida and updated their records, I too was registered to vote in two states.

Correct, it's okay if they voted just once, if they voted twice, it's voter fraud. My guess is the overwhelming majority of people in that position, including you, voted only once. There is zero evidence to suggest any significant number of people (much less the Democratic party only as Trump is claiming) voted more than once. Surely you can see the irony or humor of Mr. Trump's insistence that the dual registration is partly responsible or such widespread fraud, when a significant percentage of his REPUBLICAN inner circle are guilty of dual registrations. Trump is making it worse for himself for providing zero proof behind his allegations.fyi, GwBush ordered a yuge investigation into voter fraud several years ago, and it came up as a non-problem. The number found was insignificant in comparison to votes cast. And most of the discrepancies found ended up clerical errors. It seems a waste of taxpayer money to do it all over again.

with almost daily complaints about fake news by our President, I ran across an interesting quote by Glen Greenwald: "Those that most loudly denounce fake news are typically those most aggressively disseminating it".

Thoughts?

Bubba1 wrote:with almost daily complaints about fake news by our President, I ran across an interesting quote by Glen Greenwald: "Those that most loudly denounce fake news are typically those most aggressively disseminating it".

Thoughts?

Makes complete sense to me!

I strongly believe that ALL of the early morning rant tweets are designed to deflect attention from other serious issues. It numbs us deliberately ... so that we are less likely to be outraged by the other problems .. like we should be.

Poor Gary Hart ... he lived in the wrong era.

Z

7 years of promising to repeal the ACA the rookie Trump failed bigly

Muslum ban failed
Health care failed
What is next for the bulls#it Trumpster?

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/24/us/p ... -news&_r=0

In Dropping Health Vote, Trump Swallowed Need for a Showdown

By JULIE HIRSCHFELD DAVIS and MAGGIE HABERMANMARCH 24, 2017

"WASHINGTON — When Speaker Paul D. Ryan arrived at the White House on Friday to inform President Trump that the health care bill he had made his first major legislative push could not pass, Mr. Trump had one reaction: He wanted revenge.

Furious at rebellious Republicans who refused to back the measure, Mr. Trump demanded that defectors cast “no” votes for all to see — even if it meant the measure’s high-profile defeat, broadcast live on television.

But over a lunch of chicken, brussels sprouts and twice-baked potatoes in the Oval Office, Mr. Ryan pleaded with Mr. Trump to reconsider.

A loss could do lasting political damage to Republicans who supported the contentious bill, Mr. Ryan argued, especially those in competitive districts who were vulnerable to primary challenges. It would do nothing to isolate or punish the Freedom Caucus, the conservative faction that had resisted the measure all along, he added."

His entire presedency is under a huge cloud with collusion with the Russians

Best day for the Dems since November 8th

Telcoman

telcoman wrote:Muslum ban failedTelcoman

When did he ban Muslum (sic)???
If you're going to lie, at least lie convincingly.

Rogue One wrote:

telcoman wrote:Muslum ban failedTelcoman

When did he ban Muslum (sic)???
If you're going to lie, at least lie convincingly.

Perhaps you should start reading reliable news sources?

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/28/opin ... erous.html

Donald Trump’s Muslim Ban Is Cowardly and Dangerous

By THE EDITORIAL BOARDJAN. 28, 2017

"First, reflect on the cruelty of President Trump’s decision on Friday to indefinitely suspend the resettlement of Syrian refugees and temporarily ban people from seven predominantly Muslim nations from entering the United States. It took just hours to begin witnessing the injury and suffering this ban inflicts on families that had every reason to believe they had outrun carnage and despotism in their homelands to arrive in a singularly hopeful nation.

The first casualties of this bigoted, cowardly, self-defeating policy were detained early Saturday at American airports just hours after the executive order, ludicrously titled “Protecting the Nation From Foreign terrorlst Entry Into the United States,” went into effect. A federal judge in Brooklyn on Saturday evening issued an emergency stay, ordering that those stuck at the airports not be returned to their home countries. But the future of all the others subject to the executive order is far from settled.

It must have felt like the worst trick of fate for these refugees to hit the wall of Donald Trump’s political posturing at the very last step of a yearslong, rigorous vetting process. This ban will also disrupt the lives and careers of potentially hundreds of thousands of immigrants who have been cleared to live in America under visas. On Saturday, as mass protests against that ban were held in various cities, the White House scaled back the reach of the policy, though not by much, exempting legal permanent residents.

That the order, breathtaking in scope and inflammatory in tone, was issued on Holocaust Remembrance Day spoke of the president’s callousness and indifference to history, to America’s deepest lessons about its own values.

The order lacks any logic. It invokes the attacks of Sept. 11 as a rationale, while exempting the countries of origin of all the hijackers who carried out that plot and also, perhaps not coincidentally, several countries where the Trump family does business. The document does not explicitly mention any religion, yet it sets a blatantly unconstitutional standard by excluding Muslims while giving government officials the discretion to admit people of other faiths.



The order’s language makes clear that the xenophobia and Islamophobia that permeated Mr. Trump’s campaign are to stain his presidency as well. Un-American as they are, they are now American policy. “The United States must ensure that those admitted to this country do not bear hostile attitudes toward it and its founding principles,” the order says, conveying the spurious notion that all Muslims should be considered a threat. (It further claims to spare America from people who would commit acts of violence against women and those who persecute people on the basis of race, gender or sexual orientation. A president who bragged about sexually assaulting women and a vice president who has supported policies that discriminate against gay people might well fear that standard themselves.)

Telcoman

For those still supporting Trump

Maureen Dowd nailed him

"Donald, This I Will Tell You

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/25/opin ... inion&_r=0

"WASHINGTON — Dear Donald,

We’ve known each other a long time, so I think I can be blunt.

You know how you said at campaign rallies that you did not like being identified as a politician?

Don’t worry. No one will ever mistake you for a politician.

After this past week, they won’t even mistake you for a top-notch negotiator.

I was born here. The first image in my memory bank is the Capitol, all lit up at night. And my primary observation about Washington is this: Unless you’re careful, you end up turning into what you started out scorning.

And you, Donald, are getting a reputation as a sucker. And worse, a sucker who is a tool of the D.C. establishment.
Continue reading the main story

Your whole campaign was mocking your rivals and the D.C. elite, jawing about how Americans had turned into losers, with our bad deals and open borders and the Obamacare “disaster.”

And you were going to fly in on your gilded plane and fix all that in a snap.

You mused that a good role model would be Ronald Reagan. As you saw it, Reagan was a big, good-looking guy with a famous pompadour; he had also been a Democrat and an entertainer. But Reagan had one key quality that you don’t have: He knew what he didn’t know.

You both resembled Macy’s Thanksgiving Day balloons, floating above the nitty-gritty and focusing on a few big thoughts. But President Reagan was confident enough to accept that he needed experts below, deftly maneuvering the strings.

You’re just careering around on your own, crashing into buildings and losing altitude, growling at the cameras and spewing nasty conspiracy theories, instead of offering a sunny smile, bipartisanship, optimism and professionalism.

You promised to get the best people around you in the White House, the best of the best. In fact, “best” is one of your favorite words.

Instead, you dragged that motley skeleton crew into the White House and let them create a feuding, leaking, belligerent, conspiratorial, sycophantic atmosphere. Instead of a smooth, classy operator like James Baker, you have a Manichaean anarchist in Steve Bannon.

You knew the Republicans were full of hot air. They haven’t had to pass anything in a long time, and they have no aptitude for governing. To paraphrase an old Barney Frank line, asking the Republicans to govern is like asking Frank to judge the Miss America contest — “If your heart’s not in it, you don’t do a very good job.”

You knew that Paul Ryan’s vaunted reputation as a policy wonk was fake news. Republicans have been running on repealing and replacing Obamacare for years and they never even bothered to come up with a valid alternative.

And neither did you, despite all your promises to replace Obamacare with “something terrific” because you wanted everyone to be covered.

Instead, you sold the D.O.A. bill the Irish undertaker gave you as though it were a luxury condo, ignoring the fact that it was a cruel flimflam, a huge tax cut for the rich disguised as a health care bill. You were so concerned with the “win” that you forgot your “forgotten” Americans, the older, poorer people in rural areas who would be hurt by the bill.

As The Times’s chief Washington correspondent Carl Hulse put it, the G.O.P. falls into clover with a lock on the White House and both houses of Congress, and what’s the first thing it does? Slip on a banana peel. Incompetence Inc.

“They tried to sweeten the deal at the end by offering a more expensive bill with fewer health benefits, but alas, it wasn’t enough!” former Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau slyly tweeted.

Despite the best efforts of Bannon to act as though the whole fiasco was a clever way to bury Ryan — a man he disdains as “the embodiment of the ‘globalist-corporatist’ Republican elite,” as Gabriel Sherman put it in New York magazine — it won’t work.

And you can jump on the phone with The Times’s Maggie Haberman and The Washington Post’s Robert Costa — ignoring that you’ve labeled them the “fake media” — and act like you’re in control. You can say that people should have waited for “Phase 2” and “Phase 3” — whatever they would have been — and that Obamacare is going to explode and that the Democrats are going to get the blame. But it doesn’t work that way. You own it now.

You’re all about flashy marketing so you didn’t notice that the bill was junk, so lame that even Republicans skittered away.

You were humiliated right out of the chute by the establishment guys who hooked you into their agenda — a massive transfer of wealth to rich people — and drew you away from your own.

You sold yourself as the businessman who could shake things up and make Washington work again. Instead, you got worked over by the Republican leadership and the business community, who set you up to do their bidding.

That’s why they’re putting up with all your craziness about Russia and wiretapping and unending lies and rattling our allies.

They’re counting on you being a delusional dupe who didn’t even know what was in the bill because you’re sitting around in a bathrobe getting your information from wackadoodles on Fox News and then, as The Post reported, peppering aides with the query, “Is this really a good bill?”

You got played.

It took W. years to smash everything. You’re way ahead of schedule.

And I can say you’re doing badly, because I’m a columnist, and you’re not. Say hello to everybody, O.K.?

Sincerely, Maureen"

Great column!

Telcoman

telcoman wrote:

Rogue One wrote: When did he ban Muslum (sic)???
If you're going to lie, at least lie convincingly.

Perhaps you should start reading reliable news sources?

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/28/opin ... erous.html

Donald Trump’s Muslim Ban Is Cowardly and Dangerous

Telcoman

Maybe you should take your own advice.

President Trump DID NOT BAN Muslims. PERIOD. If you'd bothered to actually study the facts, rather than fomenting hysteria by parroting Democrat talking points, you wouldn't be posting this drivel.

Trump's executive order makes no mention of religion ZIP. ZERO. NADA. You might want to take a moment and READ the revised executive order http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/06/politics/ ... index.html (that's assuming you'll accept CNN as a "legitimate" news source).

Judge Anthony Trenga of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia found that Trump was within his legal rights to impose the travel ban and that it was not discriminatory toward Muslims.

Judge Derrick K. Watson of the U.S. District Court for the District of Hawaii, and Theodore D. Chuang of the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland both blocked the order because they felt it was issued with the intent to disfavor a particular religion, based on statements Trump made in his run for the White House. SCOTUS in Kleindienst v. Mandel admonished the lower courts not to “look behind” (i.e. second guess) the exercise of Executive Branch discretion in immigration matters that implicate the First Amendment.

In short, two Obama appointed judges blocked Trump's executive order based on their feelings, not the law. Is it any wonder why the American public is fed up with the Democratic Party?

Rogue One wrote: Is it any wonder why the American public is fed up with the Republican Party?

Fixed that for ya

Telcoman

telcoman wrote:

Rogue One wrote: Is it any wonder why the American public is fed up with both major parties?

Fixed that for ya

Telcoman

Fixed that for you too.

Fixed that for you too.[/quote]

Rogue, a few thoughts:

1. it's possible to discriminate against a religion even if an order doesn't include every single member of that religion.
2. when Mr. Trump and members of his inner circle openly and repeatedly bragged to the press that the order was in fact a "muslim ban", perhaps it is a "muslim ban". It's on video, so it's not fake news. Or do you believe what they actually say means nothing? I believe that's a point the 2nd set of judges made on version 2. The first order also contained blatantly obvious unconstitutional items like including green card holders and those who already passed screening, which got removed, but the underlying discrimination remained.
3. All of the cases of foreign born muslim terrorlst crimes on US soil to date originated from just 3 countries: Saudi Arabia, Egypt and UAE. And the number originating from the proposed ban list? Zero! Let that digest for a moment. Now, why aren't those 3 countries that pose a confirmed, verifiable threat on that list at all? Perhaps it's just a coincidence Mr. Trump has large private investments in those 3 excluded countries? Oh, but that must be the Democrats fault too.
4. Despite being temporary, at the end day, those 2 executive orders would have fixed absolutely nothing. Both were flawed executive orders that did little else except discriminate. I'm Sorry, it's not a partisan issue, it's a legal one.

Seems like every day there is more bad news about Trump!

Analysis | Trump’s approval hits a new low of 36 percent — but that’s not the bad news

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/ ... li=BBnb4R7

Telcoman

Bubba1 wrote:Rogue, a few thoughts:

1. it's possible to discriminate against a religion even if an order doesn't include every single member of that religion.
2. when Mr. Trump and members of his inner circle openly and repeatedly bragged to the press that the order was in fact a "muslim ban", perhaps it is a "muslim ban". It's on video, so it's not fake news. Or do you believe what they actually say means nothing? I believe that's a point the 2nd set of judges made on version 2. The first order also contained blatantly obvious unconstitutional items like including green card holders and those who already passed screening, which got removed, but the underlying discrimination remained.
3. All of the cases of foreign born muslim terrorlst crimes on US soil to date originated from just 3 countries: Saudi Arabia, Egypt and UAE. And the number originating from the proposed ban list? Zero! Let that digest for a moment. Now, why aren't those 3 countries that pose a confirmed, verifiable threat on that list at all? Perhaps it's just a coincidence Mr. Trump has large private investments in those 3 excluded countries? Oh, but that must be the Democrats fault too.
4. Despite being temporary, at the end day, those 2 executive orders would have fixed absolutely nothing. Both were flawed executive orders that did little else except discriminate. I'm Sorry, it's not a partisan issue, it's a legal one.

Love this post!!

Z

Bubba1 wrote:I had to chuckle after Trump's proof-free proclamation of widespread voter fraud, news just came out that one of his closest advisors (Bannon) and his daughter Tiffany are both illegally registered to vote in 2 different states.

Another chuckle from the Trump press secretary

http://www.cc.com/video-clips/ubvl8e/th ... -secretary

Telcoman

Instead of watching FoxNews and alt/right podcasts he should be watching Sesame Street so he can understand what certain words mean. This gem after meeting with President Xi of China:

"Otherwise, we're just going to go it alone. That will be all right, too. But going it alone means going it with lots of other nations." ___Donald Trump, April 12, 2017

The first graders passing through the crosswalk I'm assigned to know what the word alone means.

Analysis: A crisis Trump can't manage with tweet or taunt

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/ ... li=BBnbcA1

"WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump is facing a crisis he can't manage with a tweet or a taunt.

The appointment of former FBI Director Robert Mueller as special counsel overseeing the federal government's Russia investigation has dramatically raised the legal and political stakes and put Trump's young presidency in dangerous territory just four months after he was sworn into office.

White House and campaign records may be subpoenaed, and Trump's presidential privilege to keep West Wing conversations private could be challenged. Current and former staffers probably will have to hire pricey lawyers and sit for interviews. Trump himself may have to answer questions.

And even if Trump's campaign is ultimately cleared of wrongdoing, the shadow of an investigation will hang over the White House for months or even years."

Telcoman

Drip Drip Drip

Rep. Gowdy to Trump officials: "Disclose every contact you have ever had with Russia"

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/trey-gow...d-with-russia/

"The Republican chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee says Trump officials need to disclose any and all contacts with Russia -- sooner rather than later.

"You should get everyone in a room, and from the moment you watched either 'Dr. Zhivago' or read 'Brothers Karamazov' to the point you had a shot of liquor with a guy in a furry hat, you need to disclose every contact you have ever had with Russia," Rep. Trey Gowdy, a Republican from South Carolina, said Wednesday on "CBS Evening News" when asked what he would say to the Trump administration."

"We're not going to have any more of these disclosures coming out on the front page of the newspaper," Gowdy said. "Go ahead and tell the special counsel every connection you've had. Get this behind us before Labor Day."

Gowdy was reacting to the recent disclosure of a June 2016 meeting between Donald Trump Jr., Paul Manafort, Jared Kushner and a Russian lawyer with ties to the Kremlin. On Tuesday, President Trump's eldest son released emails showing that the meeting's stated purpose was the disclosure of damaging information about Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton as part of the Russian government's support of then-candidate Donald Trump.

In an interview with Sean Hannity on Fox News Tuesday night, Donald Trump Jr. called the meeting "a waste of 20 minutes" and said the lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, did not provide the Trump campaign with the promised information.

On Wednesday, Gowdy said he remains confident in the administration, but that the ongoing Russia probes by special counsel Robert Mueller and congressional investigators were distracting from the agenda of Republicans in Congress.

"I think we are missing an increasingly shrinking window of opportunity," Gowdy said. "We're now in July. We're not talking about infrastructure, we're not talking about tax reform, we're really not even talking about health reform that much. We're talking about Comey and obstruction of justice and potential criminality and Russia."

Gowdy, a former prosecutor, said the legal issues arising from the meeting between Veselnitskaya and Trump campaign officials stem from laws prohibiting actions of foreign nationals in campaigns.

I think, potentially, there could be four or five different statutes impacted, most of which deal with whether or not you can solicit or receive anything of value from a foreign national," Gowdy said. "But Bob Mueller is an expert in criminal law, and I never was, and I certainly am not now, so I trust Bob Mueller to sort all that out."

Mueller's investigation now includes 16 attorneys hired to look into Russian interference in the 2016 race, which the U.S. intelligence community has determined was designed to help Mr. Trump win the presidency.

In an interview with Fox News on Tuesday, Gowdy criticized the Trump administration over what he called the "drip, drip, drip" of revelations related to the various Russia investigations.

"We've got to be the ones disclosing this," he told CBS News on Wednesday. "We can't have it uncovered by an investigative reporter."

Six months has now elapsed since Trump took office.
He has accomplished nothing and the coal miners still have no jobs and are on the verge of losing their health insurance.

Telcoman

With Trump in the White House plenty of jobs for lawyers.
Coal miners, not so much.

Trump's legal bills soar as Russia probes grow

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/ ... li=BBnb7Kz

"WASHINGTON — President Trump already has stockpiled nearly $12 million for his 2020 re-election campaign, but his spending on legal expenses is soaring as his administration deals with a rapidly expanding investigation into possible collusion between his campaign and the Russian government, documents released Saturday afternoon show.
drones and planes
Trump's campaign racked up more than $677,000 in "legal consulting" fees between April and June, more than twice the $249,000 he spent on legal bills during the first three months of his presidency, newly filed Federal Election Commission reports show.

Most of the legal expenses were tied to his longtime election law firm, Jones Day.

But the filings also show a nearly $90,000 payment for legal expenses to his company, the Trump Organization, and $50,000 payment on June 27 to the law firm of Alan Futerfas, the New York-based criminal attorney now representing Donald Trump Jr.

The younger Trump is facing increased scrutiny over revelations that he met a Russian lawyer in the heat of the 2016 presidential campaign, believing that the Russian government had dirt to offer on Democratic presidential contender Hillary Clinton.

The payment to Futerfas came before The New York Times broke news of Trump Jr.'s meeting with the Russian lawyer and nearly two weeks before it was publicly announced that Futerfas would represent the president's oldest son.

Michael Glassner, the executive director of Trump's campaign, did not respond to requests for more information about the payment to Futerfas and whether it amounted to a plan to use campaign dollars for all of the younger Trump's future legal bills.

Futerfas did not immediately respond to an inquiry about the payment and its timing, and a White House official referred the question to the campaign.

Using donors' money to pay his son's legal bills "should be permissible," Washington election lawyer Ken Gross told USA TODAY, because the younger Trump's actions "were purportedly on behalf of the campaign."

New details have emerged in recent days about the meeting involving the president's son. On Friday, news broke that a Russian-American lobbyist who once served in the Soviet military also was part of the June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower.

On Saturday, the president formally announced the addition of a veteran Washington lawyer Ty Cobb to his legal team at the White House. Cobb, a partner in the investigations practice at the Hogan Lovells firm is expected to oversee the White House's legal and media response to the Russia probes.

Bob Biersack, a senior fellow at the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, said if Trump campaign pays his son's legal expenses a key question will be whether it will underwrite the legal expenses related to the Russia investigation for other campaign staffers.
Big cash reserves

In all, Trump’s campaign spent more than $4.3 million during the April-to-June fundraising quarter. Nearly half the money went to “digital consulting” and “online advertising” conducted by Giles-Parscale, a Texas firm that oversaw Trump’s 2016 digital efforts.

(Brad Parscale, a firm owner and the campaign’s digital guru, announced Friday that he had accepted an invitation to testify before the House intelligence committee as it examines Russia’s election meddling. In a statement, Parscale said he was "unaware of any Russian involvement in the digital and data operations" of the Trump campaign.)

The campaign also spent more than $200,000 at Trump-owned properties during the three-month period covered by Saturday’s filings, including lodging expenses at the Trump International Hotel in Washington and rent to Trump Towers in New York, where his campaign is headquartered

Those earning salaries from the campaign include John Pence, the nephew of Vice President Pence, hired in January as the campaign’s deputy executive director. He’s earned $82,000 in the first six months of this year.

Still, the Trump political operation has big cash reserves.

In addition to the nearly $12 million Trump’s reelection campaign had stockpiled in the bank at the end of June, two other joint fundraising committees he shares with the Republican National Committee had a combined $10.6 million in leftover funds in their campaign accounts, Federal Election Commission filings show.

Those committees, Trump Victory and the Trump Make America Great Again Committee, allow the Trump campaign operation to solicit six-figure checks. And the new filings show big donors gravitating to the president, who relied largely on small-dollar contributors to fuel his 2016 campaign.

Among the biggest donors: Lianbo Wang and Sherry Li, who gave a combined $600,000.

In recent years, Li has pushed a development project near the Catskills Mountains in New York initially described in media accounts as a Chinese Disneyland.

The project now is touted as a higher-education center, The Thompson Education Center, to be funded by wealthy Chinese individuals, who could ultimately earn permanent residency in the United States through their investments.

Among other six-figure contributors to the Trump campaign operation: Washington Redskins owner Dan Snyder, who gave $100,000."


Telcoman

to interrupt Howie's weekly cut-and-paste-athons, Colbert did have an amusing line last night. "Every time he [Trump] says something is a 'nothing burger', it turns out to be a juicy quarter pounder with sleaze..."

Sorry all of you out of work coal miners, Carrier laid off workers, laid off retail workers.

During ‘Made in America Week,’ President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club applies to hire 70 foreign workers

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/ ... li=BBnb7Kz

"President Trump's Mar-a-Lago Club in Florida has asked permission to hire 70 foreign workers this fall, attesting — in the middle of the White House's “Made in America Week” — that it cannot find qualified Americans to serve as cooks, waiters and housekeepers.

Those requests were made to the Department of Labor in recent days and posted online Thursday. The for-profit club, where Trump spent numerous weekends this spring, asked permission to hire 15 housekeepers, 20 cooks and 35 waiters.

In addition, Trump's golf club in nearby Jupiter, Fla. asked permission to hire six foreign workers as cooks. The applications to the Department of Labor are a first step in the process of applying for H-2B visas, which would allow the clubs to bring in foreigners for temporary work between October and next May.

The applications were first reported Thursday by BuzzFeed News.

Earlier this week, the Trump administration said it would expand the number of H-2B visas available nationwide this year by 15,000, using power granted by Congress to go beyond the statutory cap of 66,000 per year. This category of visas are given to foreign workers filling temporary jobs outside the agriculture industry, in fields like construction, fishing and tourism.

Mar-a-Lago is open only during Palm Beach's ritzy winter “season,” when the club's wealthy members arrive from colder climes and the ballrooms are used for charity galas. It has applied for H-2B visas in past years, although this year's request is slightly larger than the one in 2016. That year, Trump's club asked for 64 workers: This year, he is asking for one more cook and five more waiters.

Now, the Labor Department — which reports to Trump — must make decisions that will affect two for-profit business that the president still owns.

The next step, a Department of Labor spokesman said, is that the two clubs must take steps to try to recruit American workers for these jobs. That often involves placing help-wanted ads in local newspapers and contacting former workers. If those efforts are unsuccessful, then Trump's clubs can ask for the Department of Labor to certify that it has tried and failed to hire Americans. After that, the Trump clubs can ask the Department of Homeland Security to issue visas for workers it has found in other countries.

The Department of Labor did not respond to a question about how it would avoid a conflict of interest in considering these requests from the president's businesses.

Trump built his campaign last year in part on an appeal to American workers angry that their jobs had been taken by immigrants or laborers overseas. In his inaugural address, Trump said that under his leadership the country would “follow two simple rules: buy American, and hire American.”

And this week, Trump has celebrated American companies and American labor, including an event at the White House where the president climbed into the cab of an American-made firetruck. In a proclamation Monday, Trump said he called “upon Americans to pay special tribute to the builders, to the ranchers, to the crafters, and to all those who work every day to make America great.”

Earlier this year, the Trump Winery near Charlottesville, Va., applied for visas to hire 23 foreign workers under a different visa program meant for farm workers.

The Trump Organization did not respond to questions sent by email on Thursday afternoon, asking why American workers could not be found to fill these jobs — and if the company had made any extra efforts this year, in light of Trump's calls to hire American workers.

The Secret Service did not respond to a query asking whether it would have a role in vetting any foreign laborers hired to work in a club that serves, at times, as the president's home."

Telcoman

I don't think anyone likes lying for their boss?

Spicer resigns, Scaramucci to be White House communications director

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics ... litics_pop

"White House press secretary Sean Spicer resigned on Friday following the appointment of wealthy financier Anthony Scaramucci as White House communications director, according to a White House official. Scaramucci has previously had a tense relationship with both Spicer and White House chief of staff Reince Priebus. This story will be updated.

The chaos engulfing President Trump and his orbit intensified Friday, as Trump moved to shake up his legal and White House communications teams in response to the widening special counsel probe into his campaign’s possible collusion with the Russian government and its impact on the administration’s stalled legislative agenda.

Trump’s longtime personal attorney, Marc Kasowitz, will step back from his central role in the president’s outside legal team with John M. Dowd, a seasoned Washington attorney with a focus on white-collar crime, now taking the lead in managing the president’s defense. Mark Corallo, a longtime GOP operative who had served as a spokesman for Trump’s legal team, resigned Thursday.

Meanwhile, at the White House, Trump is considering installing ally and wealthy financier Anthony Scaramucci as his communications director. He was scheduled to meet with the president in the Oval Office at 10 a.m. on Friday, according to a senior White House official.

Bringing Scaramucci into the White House could touch off another round of intense backbiting and tension among Trump’s senior staff, especially with chief of staff Reince Priebus, with whom he has clashed in the past. The communications post has remained open since it was vacated by Michael Dubke in May.

The president has become agitated by the possibility that special counsel Robert Mueller might begin looking into Trump and his family’s personal finances. In an interview this week with the New York Times, the president issued a warning to Mueller that such a move would be a “violation.”

“Let’s go back to what the purpose of the investigation was: Russian interference in our election,” said White House counselor Kellyanne Conway, speaking on Fox News Friday morning. She added, “Where is this going and are Americans comfortable with that — with the taxpayers funding this, with this going off all types of chutes and ladders?”

Trump’s legal team has begun working to undermine the special counsel probe, including investigating ways to highlight conflicts of interest on Mueller’s, The Washington Post reported on Thursday. The president has also inquired about his pardon authority.

After the story was published, one of Trump’s attorneys, Dowd, said it was “not true” and “nonsense.”

The idea that Trump would proactively pardon people involved in the Russia investigation was immediately criticized by the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, which is also investigating Russian meddling in the election and possible Trump campaign collusion.

“The possibility that the President is considering pardons at this early stage in these ongoing investigations is extremely disturbing,” Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-Va.) said in a statement. “Pardoning any individuals who may have been involved would be crossing a fundamental line.”

The White House has struggled to remain focused on its agenda, amid the constant drumbeat of the Russia investigation. The president himself has only fueled the Russia frenzy, giving an interview on Wednesday in which he talked extensively about the probe.

Last week, the White House announced that another attorney, Ty Cobb, would join the White House to help manage the response to the investigation internally."

Spicey will be fondly remembered on Saturday Night Live

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