Steven Harper has an exhaustive timeline on Trump and ties to Russia. It’s very extensive, so no quoting here. Click on over to read, and do much scrolling!
If there’s any confusion about all the collusion, this should help clear it up.
Also see: White House’s explanation for Kushner’s secret meeting with a Russian banker unravels. * The White House desperately wants Sally Yates to keep quiet.
Republican congressman Devin Nunes (Latvian Foreign Ministry/Flickr).
Key House Democrats are calling on Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes to recuse himself from an investigation into alleged ties between the Trump campaign and Russia, widening a stunning partisan split over the probe.
[…]
Ryan still supports Nunes, spokeswoman AshLee Strong said Monday, and will not ask him to recuse himself.“Speaker Ryan has full confidence that Chairman Nunes is conducting a thorough, fair, and credible investigation,” Strong said.
Rep. Joaquin Castro, in an interview Monday evening with CNN’s Erin Burnett on “OutFront,” echoed Schiff’s call.“Actions taken by the chairman have compromised the investigation,” Castro said. “Chairman Nunes at this point should recuse himself from this investigation.”He said Nunes, who was a member of Trump’s transition team, was too invested in Trump’s political agenda, and acting in a partisan way.“I understand that for members of Congress, there is of course an inclination to help a President who’s of your party,” Castro said. “You simply can’t do that. … You have to be able to separate yourself from that.”Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham and John McCain — two frequent critics of the Trump administration and Russia — joined in criticism of Nunes Tuesday morning, though they stopped short of calling for the chairman to recuse himself.Graham told NBC’s “Today” show that Nunes “has to repair the damage,” though he added that “the House is off track and probably can’t get back on track.”“If he’s not willing to tell the Democrats and the Republicans on the committee who he met with and what he was told, he has lost his ability to lead,” Graham said, “and the Democrats on the committee are becoming prosecutors.”And McCain said Nunes needs to provide more answers.
Russian security forces detain a protester in Moscow on Sunday. CREDIT: AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko.
I have written many times about the current rounds of draconian legislation here in uStates, in an attempt to quell dissent and protest. As if the legislation isn’t bad enough, of course, there’s the constant narrative of lies coming out of the U.S. Regime, about protesters being paid and other such bullshit. It looks like Russia is going with the very same playbook, which is hardly surprising. What is surprising? The poisonous irony in the rather belated statement by the Tiny Tyrant’s regime about the treatment of Russian protesters:
Late Sunday evening, American time, President Donald Trump’s administration addressed the crackdown in a written statement bathed in irony. “The United States strongly condemns the detention of peaceful protesters throughout Russia on Sunday,” the statement from acting State Department spokesman Mark Toner — which was not issued until 12 hours after the first reports of mass arrests in Moscow — read.
“The Russian people, like people everywhere, deserve a government that supports an open marketplace of ideas, transparent and accountable governance, equal treatment under the law, and the ability to exercise their rights without fear of retribution,” Toner added.
Gee, isn’t that nice? Odd how none of that applies to American citizens, or American government, for that matter. The sheer weight of hypocritical irony in that should have been enough to flatten the white house and drive it a mile deep into the earth.
Toner’s words also contrast with Trump’s own pattern of rhetoric and behavior toward dissenters in his own country.
The weekend protests across Russia are not a particularly close analog to the anti-Trump demonstrations that American activists have staged since his election victory. Alexei Navalny, the prime mover behind the anti-Putin protests, is himself a nationalist hardliner whose political platform includes ethnocentric promises akin to Trump’s own stances on immigration, economics, and law enforcement.
But it is nonetheless odd to see criticism of Putin’s crackdown from the government of a man who has called for a criminal investigation into the Movement for Black Lives and encouraged his supporters to beat up protesters.
At rallies throughout his 2016 campaign, Trump relished opportunities to bash protesters — typically pausing his stump speech to peer into the crowd and ask his supporters to remove hecklers by force.
[…]
Today, Trump’s administration is also pursuing serious felony charges against hundreds of people who were rounded up in Washington, D.C., on Inauguration Day after a smaller group of black-clad Antifa protesters smashed a few shop windows and, in a handful of cases, scrapped with police.
Many of those facing felony charges were simply nearby when police “kettled” everyone who happened to be within a few blocks of the stores targeted by the radical fringe. Several journalists were arrested and charged with felonies that were eventually dropped by prosecutors.
Many of Trump’s allies share his disdain for dissidents. Milwaukee County Sheriff Dave Clark has said that protests “must be quelled” because “there is no legitimate reason to protest the will of the people.”
State-level Republican lawmakers in several states have introduced legislation curtailing the right to protest, usually by raising the criminal penalties marchers may face and broadening the scope of rioting statutes.
[…]
Trump’s team insists that such street-level dissent is not sincere but rather a synthetic display manufactured by wealthy liberal donors. The Kremlin is now saying the same about the Navalny-led protesters, many of whom were reportedly in their teens.
Sunday’s anti-Putin rallies were only as large as they were, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, because marchers were “promised financial rewards in the event of their detention by law enforcement agencies.”
Aww, isn’t that sweet, it’s the same story. Think Progress has the full story.
The Tiny Tyrant is now claiming that he never wanted to “do” healthcare first, no. He’s claiming he never ever intended to pass the repeal and replace in the first 100 days, nope, nope, nope. There is one thing to say about all those Trump fanatics, they did actually listen to him, and I’m pretty sure they heard all the times the Tiny Tyrant yelled about destroying the ACA. I wonder if they’ll stop a moment now, and figure out that no, it’s not just actual politicians who lie. In comparison to the Tiny Tyrant, politicians don’t lie much at all, because they know they will be called to account. The Tiny Tyrant hasn’t seemed to have figured that one out yet. He just lies, and expects everyone to swallow it down.
Think Progress has a complete list of the 68 times Trump swore to kill off healthcare, immediately. Here are three of them:
“Someone said what’s the first thing you’re going to do? Well we’re going to work immediately on repealing Obamacare.” [Sioux City, IA, 10/27/15]
“I would work immediately on Obamacare repeal and replace, and we would do something terrific there.” [FOX, 11/3/15]
“Everybody in here, many of you know me, from day one I’ve been talking about we’re going to repeal and replace Obamacare from day one, we’re going to do it. If you remember, so important, from day one I’ve been saying, repeal and replace Obamacare.” [Milford, NH, 2/2/16]
Anderson Cooper has been busy laying down the truth in light of all the current refutations by the Tiny Tyrant and regime. Cooper has two videos of all the times the Tiny Tyrant promised to “do” healthcare on Day One. Oh, that infamous Day One.
“Today, Republicans failed to do what they’ve been promising for years, the president failed to do what he said he would from the beginning of his campaign,” Cooper said, claiming that he was speaking from the “smoking political crater formerly known as Washington.”
But according to Trump, he never intended to pass the repeal and replacement of Obamacare in the first 100 days. Cooper fact-checked the claim with a supercut of videos showing that over and over again Trump pledged for Trumpcare to be the first issue and take place on “day one.”
“That was the president on repealing and replacing ASAP on the campaign,” Cooper said.
After the commercial break, Cooper called out Trump for being unable to do what he has always claimed “he knows how to do best:” Make a deal.
Cooper rolled another supercut of each of the times Trump claimed that he would make the best deal and his lesson on how to make a deal. There were even cases in which Trump attacked Democrats and Republicans for being unable to make a deal, as he said that he could have done in their place.
The full article is here, and here are the videos: