LOLOL GIULIANI HAHA WHOOPS. Wonkagenda For Thurs., May 3, 2018.
Morning Wonketariat, and happy World Press Freedom Day ! Here's some of the things wemaybe talking about today.
Trump's new "lawyer" Rudy Giuliani went on Hannity to drag his ass across the front lawn of Trump's White House while saying Trump knew Michael Cohen paid Stormy Daniels to STFU about their Forbes-fueled fuckfest, AND that Trump paid Cohen back over several months by giving him a retainer. Shortly after shitting the bed on national television, Giuliani told the WSJ this was all part of the plan, and Trump knew he was nuking the legal strategy the Trump campaign had been using to fight allegations of campaign finance violations.
[ Hannity Insanity ] [ Transcript ] [ WSJ Archive ]
Trump added Emmet T. Flood, a former Clinton and Bush 43 lawyer, to his team, signaling a shift in Trump's legal strategy as Trump is now openly attacking the DOJ and Bob Mueller, threatening to "use the powers granted to the President" to squash the Mueller probe. It's notobstruction,it's obfuscation.
This morning Trump lawyers started tweeting some bullshit about how rich celebrities pay hush money to poors all the time, and it's not our business to know how or why Trump spends his money to hide where he sticks his dick.
Former Trump campaign minion Michael Caputo bitched to Anderson Cooper about Trump-Russia making him one of the new poors, and detailed how Robert Mueller is kind of like a proctologist with large hands.
The Fed held short-term interest rates steady in an attempt to stave off the looming prospect of inflation. Good thing all those corporations got big, fat, deficit-financed tax cuts! [ Archive ]
Marco Rubio has folded up his retractable spine (again) in a new op-ed that praises the Trump tax cuts (for the super rich). Of course, Rubio did just tell The Economist, "...there’s no evidence whatsoever that the money’s been massively poured back into the American worker."
One year after House Republicans tried to kill healthcare for millions of Americans, HHS Secretary Tom Price is walking back his criticism of the individual mandate in a speech to the World Health Congress. Price noted that Congress is loathe to screw with healthcare until after the midterms.
The Trump administration has decided not to "You're Fired" HHS deputy comms director Ximena Barreto after she was unmasked as a racist, Islamophobic conspiracy theorist.
Scott Pruitt's canceled trip to Australia was planned by a lobbyist (read: friend ) who warned that the Aussies would be pissed about the Trump administration's roll back of climate change policies.
As the FTC gets ready to rule on a whole slate of really serious issues ranging from the Internet to the EU, one Obama-era Republican holdover is refusing to step down until she either gets the judgeship she was promised by Trump, or her commission expires, whichever comes first.
John Kelly can't wait to fuck off from this clown show; he's openly telling colleagues, "I don't need this," after being routinely bitched out by an increasingly paranoid Trump.
Former Florida Republican congressman and DC swamp creature Jeff Miller is being considered to head the VA thanks to his of support for taxpayer-funded privatized veterans services.
As if the gutting of civil service workers wasn't enough, Trump's new OPM director has signaled that diversity isn't a big deal for the administration.
California Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein is your new pro-pot advocate. Laugh it up!
There's a growing cry from young Democrats calling for the heads of Nancy Pelosi and the geriatric white guys running the party,but all that moaning won't amount to shit if they lose the House. For her part, Pelosi says, "It's important that it not be five white guys at the table," as she continues to tell her critics to eat a bowl of dicks.
Tennessee Republican Senator Bob Corker's refusal be mean to Democratic Gov. Phil Bredesen is annoying the Tea Party crazies in love with corporate-owned Marsha Blackburn.
Here's a profile on West Virginia AG Patrick Morrisey who's running for the West Virginia Republican Senate nomination. He's a filthy rich former lobbyist for big-pharma threatening to "blow up" DC, and he's been raking in hundreds of thousands of dollars from conservative-linked lobbying groups.
Pennsylvania Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf has set the special election for disgraced Republican Rep. Pat Meehan for Nov. 6, the same day as the general election. It's cheaper this way.
The South Florida Sun-Sentinel is apologizing for running ads for the Fort Lauderdale Gun Show on the front page, right below a large feature story Alyssa Alhadeff, an MSD victim who would have turned 15 on Tuesday.
The Iowa legislature just passed the fetal "heartbeat" bill, which would ban abortions as early as six weeks and make it a felony to use or transport fetal tissue.
Aside from blackmailing his mistress, Missouri Republican Gov. Eric Greitens is facing down a 23-page list of allegations that include lying to state ethics officials, a secret campaign operation in 2014 and 2015, improper payments to staff, and misusing a charity donor list.
DC Mayor Muriel Bowser and Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton are telling Congress to stop screwing around in DC's local affairs, like recreational marijuana and low-income abortion services, with sneaky legislative fuckery.
Here's a profile of Jordan Peterson, the nutbar being propped up by mainstream and fringe conservatives as the savior of weepy, basement dwelling man-babies rejecting women and academia.
Back in 2013, cheerleaders from the Washington Sportsball Team were flown to Costa Rica and told to surrender their passports and pose topeless for a photoshoot while surrounded by team sponsors and assorted rich guys. After the shoot, some women were told to "escort" the men to a nightclub for the evening. Let's just add sexual harassment to the list ofHorrible Things Dan Snyder Is Responsible For,right next to racism, and ruining RGIII.
An additional 27 women have come forward with sexual harassment allegations against Charlie Rose, spanning a 30 year period. It's probably safe to assume he won't get that TV show with Harvey Weinstein.
Mike Pompeo is promising to return the "swagger" to the State Department ....eww....
In the fallout from Brexit, Brits are now dealing with the shameful treatment of the Windrush generation, a mass of African-Caribbean people encouraged to immigrate to the UK to offset post-WWII labor shortages with the guarantee of citizenship, only to now face a denial of social services and the prospect of deportation decades later due to an inexcusable logistics clusterfuck. While Britain's new anti-EU Home Secretary, Sajid Javid has expressed sympathy for the elderly immigrants, privacy advocates are scoffing at calls for national biometric ID cards to help resolve future problems.
Green Berets have quietly been helping the Saudis fight Yemeni rebels, and everyone would be very happy if you didn't talk about the secret US wars.
Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu is frantically pushing his Arab panic button and hoping that he can trigger a thermonuclear holocaust with his new unchecked war powers.
Further complicating the mess in the Middle East, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas went on TV and said Jews caused the OG holocaust by being stingy.
Federal investigators are switching up how they hunt down child pornographers so that they now have an emphasis on rescuing victims rather than simply catching predators. [ Archive ]
Sad Time: The Queen of Shitty Robots, Simone Giertz, has announced she has a brain tumor. : ( [ Video ]
NICE TIME! Michelle Obama was talking to college-bound kids in Philly about all that hopey-changey stuff and said, "I know that you are me,” Obama told the crowd. “And if I can be standing here as your forever first lady, then you can do anything you put your mind to." [ Video ]
NICE TIME! Mandy Manning of Joel E. Ferris High School in Spokane, Washington, is your badass teacher of the year after accepting the award from Trump while wearing pins supporting the Peace Corps, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Women's March, and Trans rights. For the past six years, Manning has taught English and math to immigrant and refugee students
And here's your morning Nice Time! A squeaky baby Colobus Monkey!
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