Was Trump Trying To Distract From More Foreign Money Flooding Into The GOP With His Tweets Vilifying The Squad?

On Sunday, Chris Wallace had Kapo Stephen Miller on his show, where he pushed back on Trump's racism by telling Miller that "There’s no question that he is stoking racial divisions," referring to Trump's repulsive lies about The Squad. Meanwhile, another Fox personality, Geraldo Rivera, told the NY Times that Señor Trumpanzee's recent attacks on The Squad have shown him that critics of Trump "were much more right than I... My friendship with the president has cost me friendships, it has cost me schisms in the family, my wife and I are constantly at odds about the president." He's coming to his senses and added "as much as I have denied it and averted my eyes from it, this latest incident made it impossible to defend him."

Trump was at it again when he woke up yesterday; he just can't stop himself. And it's dangerous, not just to himself and his party-- like, who cares?-- but to his targets. The Illinois Republican Party produced the sickening, not funny poster above. And guess what inspired Gretna, Louisiana police officer-- fired on Monday-- Charlie Rispoli to respond to some fake Facebook bullshit by threatening to shoot AOC? Who is inspiring this kind of thing? You know who... you know exactly who.

So what was Trump trying to distract from yesterday when he woke up? There's so many possibilities that God only knows, but it certainly could have been the story BuzzFeed broke about how Giuliani has been trying to get Ukraine to illegally help Trump's 2020 election bid. A BuzzFeed team reported that "Two unofficial envoys reporting directly to Donald Trump’s personal lawyer have waged a remarkable back-channel campaign to discredit the president’s rivals and undermine the special counsel’s inquiry into Russian meddling in US elections. In a whirlwind of private meetings, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman-- who pumped hundreds of thousands of dollars into Republican campaigns and dined with the president-- gathered repeatedly with top officials in Ukraine and set up meetings for Trump's attorney, Rudy Giuliani, as they turned up information that could be weaponized in the 2020 presidential race. The two men urged prosecutors to investigate allegations against the Democratic frontrunner Joe Biden."

Meanwhile, the two men-- who both have troubled financial histories-- rose to prominence in Republican circles, meeting with party leaders while injecting hundreds of thousands of dollars into top Republican committees and dozens of candidates’ campaigns.

As they carried out their campaign, they used their proximity to the White House to tout a new business they set up to sell natural gas in Ukraine, with photos posted on Facebook showing Parnas posing with President Trump in the White House and top House members on Capitol Hill.

Their work proved influential. Prosecutors in Kiev announced in March they would investigate the officials accused of trying to steer the election in Clinton’s favor-- a month after meeting with Parnas, Fruman, and Giuliani-- and Trump applauded the plan in an interview with Fox News, calling the allegations “big” and “incredible.” The next month, Attorney General William Barr announced he had appointed a federal prosecutor to lead a probe into the origins of the Mueller investigation.

Parnas said he expected the information that he and Fruman advanced to become an important focus of Barr’s inquiry, and to dominate the debate in the run-up to the 2020 election. “It’s all going to come out,” he said. “Something terrible happened and we’re finally going to get to the bottom of it.”

In an exclusive interview with BuzzFeed News at the Trump International Hotel, the 47-year-old former stock broker insisted he and Fruman were not paid for acting as intermediaries between the Ukrainian officials and Giuliani. “All we were doing was passing along information,” he said. “Information was coming to us-- either I bury it or I pass it on. I felt it was my duty to pass it on."

...Kenneth McCallion, a former federal prosecutor who once represented Ukraine’s former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko, said Parnas and Fruman were “playing with fire” by carrying out their campaign in the US and Ukraine without registering as foreign agents or being vetted by the State Department.

“Trump has either authorized Giuliani to engage in private diplomacy and deal-making, or even worse, remains silent while Giuliani and his dodgy band of soldiers of fortune engage in activities that severely undermine US credibility and are contrary to fundamental US interests,” he said.

...What’s clear is that, for Parnas and Fruman, the stakes were more than just political. While they launched a new energy company to operate in Ukraine, large sums of money were flowing into various bank accounts belonging to the men that are now the focus of legal complaints.

In one transaction in 2018, more than $1 million was wired to a bank account belonging to Parnas from the client trust account of a Florida lawyer specializing in real estate and foreign investments. Parnas and Fruman then redirected $325,000 to a Trump-supporting super PAC-- without declaring the original source of the funds, records and interviews show.

The money is now the target of a complaint before the Federal Election Commission by a non-profit watchdog group.

None of the crooked politicians who have taken bribes from Parnas and Fruman have returned the money. Aside from about $10,000 to the NRSC and RNC, here are some of the suspicious characters who got maxed-out contributions from Igor Fruman in 2018:

• Rick Scott (R-FL)- $5,400
• Señor Trumpanzee- $2,700
• Pete Sessions (R-TX)- $2,700
• Joe Wilson (R-SC)- $5,400

Lev Parnas donated tens of thousands to Republicans in 2018 also, but most of it went through Party committees, like the RNC ($33,400) but also Republican state parties in New York, Wisconsin, West Virginia, Mississippi, Missouri, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, California, North Dakota, North Carolina, Louisiana, Wyoming, Alabama, Virginia, Connecticut, Kansas, Minnesota, and Illinois. He also mixed-out to Trump and Pete Sessions, bringing the bribes to the two of them to $5,400 each for 2018 from Parnas and Fruman. Such nice generous Ukrainians. I hope someone asks Mueller tomorrow if his investigation looked into this money trail.

Or maybe what got his goat was something much more prosaic, a new Marist poll for NPR that shows Trump with horrifying re-elect numbers. Registered voters were asked if they would definitely vote for or definitely vote against Trump in 2020. Only 8% were unsure. 53% said they would definitely vote against him and just 39% said they would definitely vote for him. Even among 2016 Trump supporters, just 89% said they were definitely going to vote for him again. He is also underwater in every section of the country. The South is his strongest region but even there just 44% said they re definitely onboard for 2020, while 50% they will definitely vote against him. In the West, that jumps to 57% definitely against and his definitely vote for him contingent sinks to just 33%. That would have sure been enough to make him start cursing out AOC, Ilhan, Rashida and Ayanna again.

2018 In Review - And Now A Word From The Asylum Escapees At Trump TV. The Whole World Is Watching, Part 7

by Noah

At DWT, we watch FOX "News" so you don't have to, although, if you want to see inside the crazy house... just steel yourself and promise yourself you won't scream or tear out your hair. The above clip is a good example of how far gone the wackos and buffoons holding court are at what Josef Goebbels would regard with orgasmic delight.

There have been changes at FOX "News" in recent times but you'd never know it. Creator Roger Ailes is gone. He died in 2017 after leaving in a shitstorm of sexual harassment claims and comparisons to Jabba the Hutt. I wish he was still alive so that I could ask him if the infamous Orson Wells panic–inducing 1938 radio broadcast of War Of The Worlds was his inspiration for how easily you can fool mass numbers of people by merely giving them your fictional story with a few cosmetic trappings of a real event.

It was Ailes, a former Nixon aide (Say no more!), who first came up with the idea of FOX “News” and actually called it GOP-TV. Ailes was not only an aide to Nixon. He was a media consultant for Ronald Reagan and Daddy Bush. He also worked for Rudy “Crazy Rudy” Giuliani’s first mayoral campaign and Trumpanzee’s “presidential” campaign. He especially assisted Trump with debate preparation.

If you take another look at the particulars of the last paragraph, you can see the obvious DNA and bias of the Faux News Network. Taking into consideration of who and what Ailes was, one can easily guess that it was Ailes who coached Trump to lurk menacingly behind Hillary Clinton as she spoke at the debates. (She should have wheeled and kicked his tiny balls up to his throat right then and there). In any event, someone of the insidious character of Ailes was a perfect match for Trump.

Former boss Bill Shines is also gone, taking his own stench of sexual harassment charges to a job at the Trump White House where he can be with his own kind. Bill O'Reilly, likewise left with the same cloud and is exiled to pathetic Newsmax TV and writing books about historical figures that are the literary equivalent of fake wooden floors at a cheap hotel chain. But not to worry, the hypocrisy endemic to all far right conservatives is still thriving at FOX. That was perfectly evident in their ignoring of this year’s Ivanka Trump email scandal after spending years denouncing Hillary Clinton for the same thing, just as the clip above alludes.

FOX, in fact, now has a nearly all buffoon roster filled with the White Nationalist likes of the uber-smarmy Tucker Carlson, the Hitler saluting Laura Ingraham, fellow White Nationalist and Trump advisor Sean Hannity, screaming hell-banshee Jeanine Pirro, something called Tomi Lahren, angry house dementia patient Lou Dobbs, and the usual cavalcade of crazies like the aforementioned saliva-spraying Trump "lawyer" Rudy Giuliani and Neo-Nazi Sebastian Gorka, a former White House aide to Senor Trumpanzee.

How bad has FOX news gotten in just the past year? You would of course, think it could not possibly get any worse than it was in the Obama years. It was a measure then of how far already gone into the far right sewer they were when they freaked out about the very event of the right down the middle establishment centrist Senator from Illinois being elected President. It was more about skin color than what they called liberal politics though. Their non-stop birtherism made that obvious enough and when he got re-elected, they went even further off the deep end.

How far off the deep end? How much further can you go than saying that the United States of America needs a Putin or, even better, Putin himself? How much further than putting a completely insane former mayor on every night? How much further than full-blown 24-hour praise and support of a sadist named Donald Trump and his policies like he’s the new Republican Jesus? Not to worry. FOX has reached a new low and all indications are that they will always do so. Trump has emboldened them to push their agenda of insanity even further. They are now nothing but a conspiracy channel, to the great delight of their supporters in the Republican Party, and, of course, their viewers.

This year saw FOX “News” devote hours and hours to one of their favorite conspiracies, a conspiracy that revolves around the death of Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich. In the hive mind of GOP-TV, Mr. Rich was murdered by none other than Hillary Clinton or her associates. FOX viewers craved the details of the made up story every day and every night, eagerly tuning in to see the likes of Hannity, Geraldo Rivera and New Gingrich pontificate on the this classic bit of real fake news.

The disgraceful exploitation of a murder victim got so bad that Seth Rich’s family, after being hurt by the death of Seth became hounded by Republicans to attack Clinton. They rightly ended up suing FOX to cease and desist instead. FOX eventually retracted their bullshit conspiracy story and the suit was dropped. Of course, FOX never apologized, not that you would expect such people to apologize for their evil. The conspiracy had its origins in the work of Ed Butowsky, a friend of Trump aide Steve Bannon.

How about Sean Hannity, an aide to Trumpanzee, suggesting Trump associates, live on national prime time TV, no less, to destroy their cell phones and other devices that they use to communicate with dear leader so Robert Mueller can’t get them and find out any details of what they’ve been up to? That’s blatantly in the realm of evidence tampering and obstruction of justice. After a commercial break, Hannity came back and hastily claimed that he was just kidding. Obviously, someone in the FOX legal department or someone with a working brain reached Hannity and told him to walk it all back. None of that matters, of course, once the message is put out there, and they know it.

FOX “News” keeps pushing the envelope further. We already have gun-crazed, FOX-watching lunatics thinking they have been granted permission or social approval to go shooting up people and places. What will FOX do next? Offer live on TV bomb-making instructions like an Al Qaeda internet site?

In October, FOX pushed their conspiracy theory that Democrats who had received pipe bombs had sent them to themselves. FOX promoted their latest conspiracy with a parade of FOX “News” experts and pundits. Goofball Geraldo Rivera even claimed that he didn’t want to sound like a “far-right lunatic” while he did so.

On FOX, only Shepherd Smith can pass for sane, conservative, but sane. He is tainted just the same. It’s hard to figure out what he’s doing there. Smith’s existence at the FOX “News” asylum can only be explained as some sort of “Broadcast News” meets “Shawshank Redemption” without the redemption. Perhaps, he just likes being stuck in an asylum, afraid to venture out into the real world beyond the walls.

See if you can tell satire of FOX “News” from the real one. It’s pretty hard.

Who Remembers Culture Of Corruption Poster Boy David Rivera (R-FL)?

Election pamphlet from a Republican primary battle

This week at a Virginia fundraiser, Romney revealed that the 3 top contenders on his VP short list are 2 extreme right-wing governors-- Bob McDonnell of the host state and Chris Christie of New Jersey-- and Florida's superficial proto-fascist junior senator, Marco Rubio. Interestingly, one of Rubio's former roommates, chief lieutenants and gangsterish business partners, Rep. David Rivera made it onto another short list at the same time: the list of sitting congressmen being investigated by the FBI and IRS on criminal tax evasion charges. The scandal-plagued congressman, with astounding ethics questions that have followed his entire sleazy career, is being investigated because he didn't pay taxes on a secret million-dollar contract he signed in 2006 between a casino and a company he had his mother front for him!

Investigators are looking at whether taxes were paid on a secret million-dollar contract Rivera signed in 2006 to manage a campaign to expand gambling in Miami-Dade County.

Among those being interviewed by FBI and IRS agents is Lori Weems, an attorney who helped draw up the contract between the owners of a Miami casino and a company linked to Rivera. Her attorney, Andres Rivero, says at least five other people are being interviewed as witnesses.

Rivera has denied he was paid for his work. The contract was made through a company started by Rivera’s mother and later run by a close family friend.

The Miami Herald Rivera's hometown paper, is on the case and reported this week that the Feds are "examining undisclosed payments from a Miami gambling enterprise" to the larcenous congressman.

Agents with the FBI and the Internal Revenue Service have begun interviewing witnesses knowledgeable about a $1 million consulting contract between Flagler Dog Track — now known as Magic City Casino — and Millennium Marketing, a company co-owned by Rivera’s 70-year-old mother and her business partner, according to sources familiar with the investigation.

In the next few weeks, federal agents are scheduled to interview Lori Weems, a lobbyist and lawyer who drafted the consulting contract while representing the Magic City Casino, sources said. Earlier this year, FBI agents also interviewed Esther Nuhfer, a Miami lobbyist and political consultant with close ties to Rivera, sources said.

Members of the Havenick family, who own the Magic City Casino, have cooperated with investigators, who appear to be examining federal tax-evasion charges.

If that last line is accurate, it's probably the end of the road for Rivera... but no one knows if Rubio will be collateral damage. And this is on top of an on-going corruption probe into his outrageous campaign finance practices. The state Republicans are so embarrassed by Rivera's antics that they are considering adding Key West to his district to make it bluer (while making neighboring Ileana Ros-Lehtinen safer). There are few districts anywhere more likely to oust a Republican incumbent this year and replace him with a Democrat.

So, needless to say, the DCCC has come up with the absolute worst politician they could find in the area to put up against him, a legislator from a neighboring district, Luis Garcia, who was on the steering committee of Democrats For Jeb Bush and was more recently threatening to switch parties-- after voting for one of the Florida GOP's crazed anti-Choice bills! This is a primo seat that can be won by a Democrat... unless the DCCC screws it up by making sure there isn't one in the race.

Holiday kickoff: A march plus quick hits -- does a country NEED a finance minister?; Geraldo's darkest day; world's worst joke

by Ken

IT'S 4TH OF JULY WEEKEND, SO WHY NOT KICK
OFF WITH SOME SUITABLY 4TH OF JULY MUSIC?

This is, I think, the best military-band march written by someone not named John Philip Sousa. In fact, it's better than all but the best of the Sousa marches. And I've got two nifty performances to share.

Alert readers will recognize that we've heard them before. It was in a May 2010 Sunday Classics post, "What stirs the blood better than a military march? This week courtesy of Mozart and Sousa." Well, we're hearing it again. (And now, with that first page of score in front of us, we can see right away that Felix Slatkin takes that first repeat while Morton Gould doesn't!)

COMING UP: Tomorrow, "Salute to the Services"; and Monday, the only possible climax to our musical 4th.

E. E. BAGLEY: National Emblem

Morton Gould and His Symphonic Band. RCA/BMG, recorded Oct. 17, 19, and 26, 1956
Concert Arts Symphonic Band, Felix Slatkin, cond. Capitol/EMI, recorded 1958

NOW, HOW ABOUT SOME HOLIDAY QUICK HITS? NOT
EXACTLY NEWS STORIES, BUT NOT EXACTLY NOT

(1) You can't slip anything past that AP

President Sarkozy and now-former Finance Minister Lagarde,
who for a brief, magical moment appeared irreplaceable

Now, with the New York sexual-assault case against forrmer IMF director Dominique Strauss-Kahn apparently near collapse, we're all wondering what exactly is the deal? There was always speculation that he was set up, maybe by people who wanted him out of the IMF (where he may have been thought not entirely on board enough with the fund's "austerity" mandate), maybe by people who didn't want him running against French President Nikolas Sarkozy in the 2012 election. If there's any chance that it was the latter, the principals may be disappointed. On yesterday's BBC World Service news, the correspondent in France was speculating that if charges against Dominique don't stick, he may be welcomed home as a martyr, with the possibility of a political future after all.

Meanwhile, there's no question that he's out of a job with the IMF, having already been replaced by French Foreign Minister Christine Lagarde. Which partially explains this teaser Wednesday morning's Washington Post's "Today's Headlines" e-newsletter:

France to name new finance minister after Lagarde chosen to head IMF
PARIS — France is expected to name a new finance minister to replace Christine Lagarde, who is leaving to take up the top job at the International Monetary Fund next week.
( Associated Press Associated Press, AP)

Disappointingly, the actual head on the story (at least by the time I clicked through; I noted that by then the story had been updated) was "French president names Francois Baroin as new finance minister to replace Christine Lagarde." Personally, I like it better the other way, which suggested that President Sarkozy was really breaking the situation down into a step-by-step process, the first step being huddling with his people to thrash out the question of whether la République really needs to have a finance minister.

(2) Geraldo's darkest day: "Humiliated and deeply embarrassed" -- all the way to the bank

Reflecting recently on "the recent press frenzy over Sarah Palin’s less-than-riveting gubernatorial e-mails," our pal Al Kamen ventured in his WaPo "In the Loop" column a week or two ago: "It was a great discredit to the trade, we’re told -- presuming we have any credit to dis."

It’s as if no one remembers the spectacular Geraldo Rivera “special” 25 years ago when he blew open Al Capone’s safe on live television, only to find a stop sign and two empty gin bottles inside. . . .

Rivera, in an interview 20 years after the event, said he was “humiliated and deeply embarrassed.” But then, he said, he found out the next morning that the show “was the highest rated syndicated special in television history.”

He’s still laughing -- all the way to the bank.

The day after that darkest day, it seems, the sun shone brightly.

(3) World's worst joke? Gotta be a contender

I've mentioned that at some point in the hazy past I must have signed up for this daily joke from Arcamax, which I usually don't even bother reading. (Mostly it's a pretext for dumping in a bunch of paid promotions that are fairly obnoxious, but not enough so to justify the possible ordeal of unsubscribing -- you never know what they're going to put you through.) I don't know why I happened to read this one the other day, but even before I got to the, er, punch line, I was thinking that I've heard a lot of jokes in my time, and a lot of real clunkers, but if I've ever heard a worse one, it's mercifully forgotten.

Naturally I felt an immediate need to share it. I've refrained till now.

Job Interview

An employment interviewer for a big company in New York was talking to an attractive young woman applying for a job. Looking over the application form, the interviewer noticed that the girl had not answered one important question concerning transportation to and from work.

"What about your bus line?" the interviewer asked her.

"I don't believe I mentioned it," came the pleased reply, "but it's a 36C."

Is that a killer joke, or what? I assume, by the way, that the "in New York" was stuck in in an attempt to lend some plausibility to the notion that a job-application form might ask for "bus line," but even if you can stretch your mind around the basic idea, wouldn't a New York application ask for subway line? Gosh, that would spoil the, er, joke, though, wouldn't it?


HAVE A SAFE AND HAPPY HOLIDAY!

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