Trump's Nixon Moment. Wonkagenda For Wed., Feb. 6, 2019

Democrats refuse to stand for Trump's American carnage, Stacey Abrams is PERFECT, and Robert Mueller is following the rubles. Your morning news brief!

Morning Wonketariat! Here's some of the things wemaybe talking about today!

Democrats sat stone faced as Trump bullshitted his way through a State of the Union address full of half-truths and double-speak peppered with cliched rhymes and alliteration. As per usual, Trump chummed the crowd with red meat,screaming about Mexican Muslim taco trucks roaring across our post-apocalyptic Southern border, "endless wars" (started by Republicans), the investigation into his Russian fuckery, and he even shed some crocodile tears on abortion and HIV before taking credit for what's left of our purple mountains' majesty and Monsanto's fruited plains while casually ignoring his huge, embarrassing failures.Axios gargles the crap about how America never being a "socialist country" was engineered to get his base frothing at the wiener. For their part, Republicans are acting like it was the best speech since George Washington drove across Delaware in a tank to beat the Soviets. [ Video / Transcript ]

If you missed Trump's second State of the Union Address, don't worry, so did a lot of other people. CNN reports the majority of people watching Orange Julius Ceaser gaslight America were Republican; naturally they spent the hour jerking themselves off in front of their double wide TVs. Politico notes that Trump's schizophrenic teleprompter reading was designed to shore up his wavering base as he faces a growing number of corruption investigations and legislative failures that paint him as an untrustworthy and incompetent loser ahead his 2020 campaign.

Because Trump is incapable of saying anything honest, here's all your fact checks:  NPR / ABC / NYTimes / CNN / WaPo 

Delivering the Democratic rebuttal to Trump's eye rolling sideshow, Stacey Abrams gave a speech that set the stage for 2020 -- rebuking Trump and the GOP's policies on health care, voting rights, economic equality, and immigration. Abrams spoke before electrical union workers in Atlanta talking about her modest upbringing, a move political wizards say is a bid to win over disaffected white, working class voters. [ Transcript ]

Not to be outdone, Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders gave his own rebuttal, as did Democratic Sen. Kamala Harris. TLDR:  Bernie yelled that Trump was a racist liar, and Harris reminded her audience that Trump purposely shut down the government for 35 days over his goddamn wall.

Trump's Energy dingus Rick Perry was the only person capable of being the "designated survivor" last night because Trump's cabinet has so many vacancies (unless you'd prefer a DeVos!). Some super nerds and policy wonks note that Trump's insistence on "flexibility" with his cabinet officials is, much like everything else in his life, not exactly legal or illegal, it's just nobody has ever been that reckless and stupid.

Mick Mulvaney has invited an undisclosed and bipartisan group of lawmakers to Camp David Friday. The rumor mill on the Hill is that Mulvaney intends to lock them all in a room with a bucket and some Hot Pockets and hope they emerge with a way to avoid another government shutdown, and give Trump money for his goddamn wall (or "peaches," or steel slats, or fencing, or whatever).

A new Politico/Morning Consult poll conducted before Trump's SOTU shows more than 52 percent of people would vote against Trump, a six percent jump over last week. In other less than shocking developments, the poll shows almost nobody cares about WALL.

Mitch McConnell emerged from his hidey hole to blow Mike Pompeo and hopefully convince him to run for the Senate, and casually walk away from any talk about Trump's wall (or "peaches", fencing, etc.). Later, McConnell went on Fox News to get all wishy-washy on Trump's wall, saying there are "different opinions about it," but that Trump, "could win anyway by vetoing the bill." When McConnell was asked if he'd support a resolution of disapproval to kill the goddamn wall, he retreated into his shell.

House Judiciary Chair Jerry Nadler isn't going to play games with acting AG Matthew Whitaker. Nadler has signaled that he may slap Meatball's ass with a subpoena if he tries to back out of his scheduled testimony Friday. The top Republican on the committee told Politico that he has "enough faith" Meatball won't flake out, but bitched about Democrats' threats to drop subpoenas on Trump officials every time they blow off Congress.

House Democrats aren't putting up with any bullshit from piece of shit FCC Chairman Ajit Pai. Yesterday the chairs of the House Commerce Committee and Communications and Technology Subcommittee sent a nastygram to Pai saying they're mad as hell about his stonewalling, and they're not going to take it anymore. The letter states Pai "failed repeatedly to act in the public interest and placed the interest of corporations over consumers," adding, "The FCC should be working to advance the goals of public safety, consumer protection, affordable access, and connectivity across the United States."

Despite Trump calling for an end to the "endless wars" started by greedy Republicans and claiming that ISIS had been one million percent dead, the head of US CENTCOM Gen. Joseph Votel told the Senate Armed Services Committee, “The fight against ISIS and violent extremists is not over and our mission has not changed." A number of legislators agreed with Votel, expressed concern over Russian aggression, and hoped that Votel -- who is retiring next month -- has a successor who isn't A Idiot.

Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar will hold a rally in Minneapolis's Boom Island Park Sunday and probably announce #ShesRunning.

We don't really care about Sen. Corey Booker being single AND a 2020 candidate, unless he's taking us out on a date. Yr Wonkette is a famously cheap date, and sexually liberated! ;)

 Sen. Elizabeth Warren is apologizing (again) for misidentifying herself as a Native American back in the 1980s after someone dug up her Texas State Bar registration card. This appears to be the first time Warren labeled herself as a Native American, but it won't be the last time conservatives scream about Warren misrepresenting her heritage while they cling to their Confederate flags and white bed sheets.

DINO Rep. Tulsi Gabbard is rejecting the endorsement of former KKK grand wizard David Duke for her 2020 campaign. In a tweet, the defender of a child murdering dictator said she wasn't 100% white. The (formerly) gay-hating faux-progressive appeared on Morning Joe to reaffirm her unwavering support for Syria's child murdering dictator, Bashar Al Assad, deny reports that Assad used chemical weapons on civilians, and deny reports that Russia is promoting her campaign .

Russia is leading an effort to convince Saudi Arabia and its allies in OPEC to create a 10-nation group to control global oil markets. The WSJ eggheads think this might not be as terrible as it seems because some people will make shitloads of money.

Why are Republicans and the Trump administration supporting the crooked regime of Guatemalan president Jimmy Morales, and undermining a years-long effort by the United Nations to investigate and prosecute historic corruption in the Morales regime? SPOILER ALERT: Because Russia and money (also Jesus).

BEFORE he resigned in disgrace amid a litany of corruption allegations, former EPA chief Scott Pruitt started a shady legal defense fund with donations from Diane Hendricks, a GOP mega-donor. Believe it or not, it's illegal to accept donations as a public official, so we'll just add that to the growing list of horrifically incompetent and corrupt crap Pruitt did while in office.

ProPublica has got its hands on a memo from Tom Barrack, the head of Trump's inaugural committee, that outlines how his company tried to profit off its connection to the incoming Trump White House.

Federal investigators are now looking at ALL the companies Paul Manafort worked with while lobbying for deposed Ukrainianmobsterpresident Viktor Yanukovych. According to the Times, Robert Mueller's team is simply following trail of Russian rubles all the way to Trump's 2016 campaign.

Netflix has inked a deal with Gwyneth Paltrow snake oil company Goop to create a "docuseries" full of crackpots who tell women to shove weird poisons up their va-jay-jays in order to get healthy.According to Variety, the company is also creating podcasts with other snake oil sales-weasels. Hopefully nobody will die.

And here's your morning Nice Time! WILD PUPPERS IN THE SNOW!

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