8/20/18 “I would consider it an honor if you would revoke my security clearance as well, so I can add my name to the list of men and women who have spoken up against your presidency”
We’ve got some fun new categories this week—and lots and lots of advances in resistance efforts. But first, enjoy the spectacle of Donald running terrified as the Russia investigation circles in on him:
As if he’s dying to be found guilty of obstruction, the commander of cheese flat-out said he revoked former CIA director John Brennan’s security clearance because of his role in the Russia investigation.
In the wake of Don’s panicky attempt to silence his critics, the retired navy admiral who oversaw the bin Laden raid (and former chancellor of UT) Bill McRaven wrote a very pointed letter to Donald asking that he revoke McRaven’s clearance as well: “[John Brennan] is one of the finest public servants I have ever known. Few Americans have done more to protect this country than John. He is a man of unparalleled integrity, whose honesty and character have never been in question, except by those who don’t know him. Therefore, I would consider it an honor if you would revoke my security clearance as well, so I can add my name to the list of men and women who have spoken up against your presidency.” (Read the whole letter, in which McRaven also tells the mentally deranged dotard that his actions have “embarrassed us in the eyes of our children, humiliated us on the world stage and, worst of all, divided us as a nation.”
In response to Donald’s action, more than a dozen former top U.S. intelligence also officials issued a sharp rebuke to the fuhrer-in-chief after he revoked Brennan’s security clearance and threatened to begin revoking that of others who disagree with him (like a fuhrer), calling it out as “an attempt to stifle free speech.” (Like a fuhrer.)
Advances at the Ballot Box
Primaries: In Connecticut, former Teacher of the Year Jahana Hayes is poised to become the state’s first black Democrat to serve in Congress after winning her primary nomination. The past week’s primaries also saw victories for candidates poised to become the first openly transgender governor (in Vermont); the first gay Native American to serve in Congress, in Kansas; and potentially the first Muslim woman in Congress, from Minnesota.
The San Antonio City Council voted 9-2 to pass a new paid sick leave ordinance—many thanks to our Indivisible members who helped in the fight!
GOP Smackdowns
So many items fit this description this week that I created a separate category for those stories.
On Thursday, August 16, more than 300 newspapers across the country published op-eds defending the First Amendment and freedom of the press in the face of escalating and ever more incendiary attacks from the mentally deranged dotard. A free press safeguards a free country—when one is attacked, count on the other being next. Donald, of course, tweeted that same morning that the “fake news media” was the “opposition party.”
In an increasingly endangered show of bipartisan unity—and an increasingly rare instance of the GOP Congress actually standing up to the very stable genius—the Senate unanimously approved a resolution stating that the press is not the enemy of the people (despite little Don frequently referring to it as such…and despite the surreality of our legislative branch actually having to resolve such a thing because it’s in question from the executive branch. Sigh). Worth reading in its entirety, the resolution “condemns the attacks on the institution of the free press and views efforts to systematically undermine the credibility of the press as an attack on the democratic institutions of the United States.”
Donald’s masturbatory military parade ballooned from a $12 million cost to $92 million—and finally the Pentagon balked, suggesting they may “delay” the parade till next year. (I wonder why? Maybe spending nearly a $1 billion to shore up Donald’s fragile little baby ego wouldn’t play well before the primaries in November…especially when the GOP administration made slashing budget cuts to programs like the Children’s Health Initiative?) Donny blamed DC’s mayor for inflating the cost, who clapped back on Twitter: “Yup, I’m Muriel Bowser, mayor of Washington DC, the local politician who finally got thru to the reality star in the White House with the realities ($21.6M) of parades/events/demonstrations in Trump America (sad).” In a childish attempt to save face,Donald then decided to cancel the parade that his Pentagon already postponed.
Stephen Miller’s uncle penned an op-ed decrying his nephew’s draconian views on immigration, considering Miller’s ancestors immigrated to America from Belarus to escape persecution in WWII: “The Glossers [Miller’s ancestors] came to the U.S. just a few years before the fear and prejudice of the ‘America first’ nativists of the day closed U.S. borders to Jewish refugees. Had Wolf-Leib waited, his family likely would have been murdered by the Nazis along with all but seven of the 2,000 Jews who remained in Antopol. I would encourage Stephen to ask himself if the chanting, torch-bearing Nazis of Charlottesville, whose support his boss seems to court so cavalierly, do not envision a similar fate for him.”
Kellyanne Conway’s husband, lawyer George Conway, continues to openly troll Donny. And just keeps doing it.
White supremacist rally organizer Jason Kessler was embarrassingly bitch-slapped by his daddy—in whose home he is living due to an inability to function as an independent adult—during a livestream shot in his daddy’s bedroom. Kessler was spouting his racist hate messages along with former U.S. Senate council (and white nationalist anti-Semite) Patrick Little, when Kessler’s father walked in and kicked the budding baby Hitler out of his bedroom.
Sarah Huckabee Sanders actually publicly recanted one of her lies—stating that the racist in chief has created more black jobs in his first year than President Obama did during his entire tenure. Sanders’s lie was off by a factor of more than fifteen: She stated President Obama created only 195K jobs for black workers, when the real number is 3 million.
Pete Souza, President Obama’s staff photographer, is hilariously trolling the crap out of Donald.
Former Donald campaign adviser Roger Stone retweeted an image hailing Donald’s proposed Space Force that showed Donald and other allies wearing uniforms with Nazi swastika logos. For realz.
Mueller Time
White House counsel Don McGahn has apparently been voluntarily working with the Mueller investigation, particularly as it relates to Donald’s potential obstruction of justice, cooperating “extensively,” as the NY Times says, based on accounts from more than a dozen White House staffers past and present.
Republicans against the Law
This category is a plump one this week.
One of Donny’s own federal judge appointees has ruled that the Mueller investigation is constitutional and legitimate—the fourth judge to do so.
The state of Illinois is suing Donald’s Trump Tower in Chicago for dumping warm water into the city’s waterways without a permit, endangering fish and other aquatic life.
A federal judge ruled that Donny can’t deport any more immigrant parents separated from children while they are seeking asylum.
A federal judge ordered Don John to immediately implement the Chemical Disaster Rule instituted by the Obama administration in response to the fertilizer plant explosion in Texas in 2013, stating that Donald’s GOP administration didn’t have the authority to delay it for a proposed 20 months.
A federal judge ruled that an acting assistant AG in the GOP administration’s Justice Department must sit for a deposition in a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of adding of a citizenship question to the 2020 census.
A judge in New York ruled that a nondisclosure agreement Donald made a former White House staffer sign is limited in scope—an interesting precedent in light of the many other NDAs his administration forced staffers to sign.
In a potential violation of campaign law, Donald’s Treasury Department retweeted one of Donny’s political posts.
GOP fund-raiser Elliott Broidy is under investigation for allegedly selling government influence with Donald’s White House.
One of Defense Secretary James Mattis’s most senior civilian advisers is under investigation after allegedly retaliating against staffers after using them to run her personal errands.
Commerce secretary Wilbur Ross held official meetings with the leaders of companies in which he had a vested financial interest, putting him under the microscope of federal watchdog agencies and lawmakers.
Your Feel-good Stories of the Week
The NYU School of Medicine announced it will provide free tuition to all students, out of concern for “overwhelming financial debt” incurred by med students. With a ballooning population of aging baby boomers and a narrowing field of GPs and other nonspecialist doctors, the measure is a heartening first step to avert the long-predicted future doctor shortage.
In Virginia, a congregation of Baptists and a group of yogis are joining together to protest a gas pipeline and compressor station proposed for the area.