The Right Fails To Unite. Wonkagenda For Mon., Aug. 13, 2018
DC unites against the right, Omarosa still clinging to 15 minutes of fame, and hackers find new ways to break voting machines. Your morning news brief.
Morning Wonketariat! Here's some of the things wemaybe talking about today.
Only a few dozen neo-Nazis and white nationalists staged their little Nazi "march" on DC. Surrounded by thousands of counter protesters and hundreds of cops, the organizer, Jason Kessler, called it a "weird and imperfect" failure. [ Photos ]
In yet another desperate attempt to hold onto her 15 minutes of fame, Omarosa went on Meet the Press and said mean things about Donald Trump, and played a secretly recorded tape of the moment she was "You're Fired" by John Kelly in the White House Situation Room. This morning she went on TV andreleased a new tape of Trump appearing clueless that she was "You're Fired"-ed by John Kelly. Well, Whoopdy-friggin-doo. [ Transcript ]
Kellyanne Conway found it hard to name all of the black staffers Donald Trump "You're Hired" for White House jobs, telling ABC's Jon Karl that, "There are plenty of people," and negroes love Donald Trump! When questioned about Omarosa, Conwaystated it's totally normal for people to sign NDAs for money when working in government (it's not). [ Transcript ]
Giuliani went on CNN (again) to ramble and lie (again) about Trump "You're Fired"-ing James Comey (AGAIN) even after Jake Tapper played audio of Giuliani lying about the thing he had just lied about. Giuliani said he wasn't a liar, and that Mueller will wrap up his investigation on September 1st because sure he will.
Not much happened in Paul Manafort's tax fraud trial Friday as the day was spent with the judge running back and forth to the jury. Prosecutors seek to wrap up their arguments this week, but Manafort's problems are just beginning as Mueller's team can always file new charges (they don't have to try very hard), regardless of the jury's verdict, or a pardon by Trump.
The Daily Beast has been combing through hacked emails from a Russian oligarch that reveals even more links in the chain of mobsters and crooks connected to the Trumpire and Russian president Vladimir Putin.
Betsy DeVos is making grifty for-profit colleges great again by scrapping the so-called gainful employment rule that choked off federal funding for phony schools more interested in saddling students with massive debt and bogus degrees than preparing them for decent careers. #MAGA
Since Mitch McConnell is a cantankerous geriatric and insufferable ass, the Senate is returning to the Hill to quickly pack some lower courts with conservative judges, and ram through a couple massive spending bills while nobody is looking. Your tax dollars at work.
Conservatives and Trump's White House are lobbying big businesses to support Brett Kavanaugh for SCOTUS by touting all the times he's disagreed with federal regulations on mortgage rules, the Clean Air Act, the CFPB, killer whales, and net neutrality.
Trump is throwing all his weight behind a boycott of Harley-Davidson after it decided to make and sell more motorcycles in Not America. The New York Times found deep divides at the Sturgis biker rally And Trump held his very own Strurgis, but at his golf course in New Jersey . The joke here is the thought of Trump on a motorcycle. Also that some of the bikers had Nazi tattoos.
New York Republican Rep. Chris Collins has suspended his reelection campaign following his indictment on insider trading charges. Now the New York Republicans are frantically trying to erase his name from the ballot before Democrats jump at the chance to flip another district. This morning racist hardcore Trumper Carl Paladino, a man who once said he wanted Obama to die of mad cow disease, announced his intention to run.
Minnesota Democratic Rep. Keith Ellison is denying allegations of abuse made by the son of an ex-girlfriend days before an electoral primary. Minnesota Public Radio reviewed private text and Twitter messages between Ellison and his ex and found no messages that corroborated the allegations.
DJTJ has become the defacto star and apologist for the Trump 2020 campaign. Slated to make 28 campaign-style stops to whip his daddy's base into a bloodthirsty frenzy, his only baggage is his legal exposure for acts of treason from those Trump Tower meetings with Russians.
Democrats are dumping PACs in order to maintain independence from corporate sponsors and party leaders so they can put their money where their mouth is when arguing against dark money and Citizens United.
Scott Walker's having a hell of a time running for reelection! He's being attacked on the left for decapitating labor unions and the public education system, and on the right for not being Trumpy enough. Poor bastard!
Last Tuesday a political website in Florida found a Republican running for a state legislative seat faked her college diploma, but rather than bow out of the race, the candidate doubled down by posting a fake photo of her degree and a partial college transcript to social media. So reporters called her on her bullshit AGAIN after noticing the program on her fake diploma wasn't even offered by the school. BOOM, journalisming!
A Baltimore cop caught on video beating the bejesus out of a man has been quit-fired after video of the beating went viral over the weekend.
NICE TIME: Utah is sending a statue of Martha Hughes Cannon, the first female state Senator, to DC to represent the state of Utah in Statuary Hall.
The old white guy leading Germany's "alt-right" thinks Steve Bannon's European vacation is destined for failure as the memory of the Holocaust is still fresh in people's minds. [ auf Deutsch ]
The outgoing UN human rights commissioner says Trump's repeated attacks on the press could, "set in motion a chain of events which could quite easily lead to harm being inflicted on journalists just going about their work," and could set a precedent for other dictators who believe in censoring and silencing their critics.
Twitter CEO @Jack Dorsey can't decide what constitutes hate speech, so he invited the NYTimes into Twitter's nerdery to watch @Jack "stroke his beard" and discuss how complex (read: bad for business) it is to hit Nazis with banhammers.
Hackers at the second-annual DefCon Voting Village hackathon have been slicing up voting machines in an effort to slut shame manufacturers (ES&S, formerly Diebold) into fixing their old, decrepit garbage machines.
A new investigation from an urban planning researcher and the AP has found many Google services on Android and iOS devices track you, even if you turn those settings off. I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords!
David Glosser, the uncle of Trump's resident racist, Stephen Miller, has penned an op-ed in Politico that calls out Miller for betraying his Not American JEEWWish heritage, stating, "Trump and my nephew both know their immigrant and refugee roots."
A publisher is yanking a "cookbook" from an internet-famous hippy after people with common sense realized eating random raw crap from the forest floor is laughably dangerous. Thanks, Prometheus.
Sacha Baron Cohen didn't have to try hard to get Corey Lewandowski to defend neo-Nazis . He also got former Sheriff David Clarke to "act" like a Nazi party policeman in 1930s Germany.
John Oliver 'splainered astroturf campaigns, and how they're exceedingly deceptive in the age of dark money, then took a couple pot shots at that pathetic Nazi march and Laura Ingraham.
And here's your morning Nice Time! Kitties on vacay!
We're 100% ad-free and reader supported, so consider buying us coffee, or get a subscription!
Follow Dominic on Twitter and Instagram!
The Right Fails To Unite. Wonkagenda For Mon., Aug. 13, 2018
These clowns keep me laughing.
There were those who (rightly ) called it that, but they let trump pay a small fine and did not pursue it, because the one who would have to investigate her was a republican. Ivanka also "contributed ".