{Video} Jake Tapper Shuts Down Stephen Miller: “I’ve Wasted Enough Of My Viewers Time.”

(SL) – White House aide Stephen Miller got a hard lesson in sticking to the topic today when he was a guest on CNN Host Jake Tapper’s show.

Miller clearly had an agenda. He wanted to attack CNN and its journalistic views while painting Donald Trump as a genius who can write 10 talking points in less than an hour after hearing a speech and recite them perfectly.

We all know that Donald Trump rarely sticks to the script which is why he finds himself in a contradictory and untruthful position 80 percent of the time. What Miller should’ve done was come prepared to answer questions honestly about Fire and Fury, the book that has become a best seller over night and paints what some say could be an accurate picture of what’s going on inside the White House.

As for whether or not Steve Bannon made certain comments about Donald Trump, Miller had no knowledge but insisted on saying the book was full of lies and trash. Trump’s meeting with the Russians, again no solid answer outside of what his agenda was. On the letter that he wrote to get James Comey released…again no solid answer outside of his agenda.

Tapper like the rest of us had had enough and pulled the plug on the interview. Check it out for yourself

Deandre Harris Says White Supremacists Were Definitely Trying To Kill Him

(SL) – We’ve all seen the photo of a young black male bleeding profusely from the head after being attacked by white supremacists in Charlottesville. We now know who he is. Twenty-year old  Deandre Harris moved to Charlottesville, Va., from Suffolk, Va., two years ago for a job opportunity as an Instructional Assistant in the special education program at a local high school.

But as The Root reports nothing could prepare him for what he experienced Saturday afternoon, when he took part in a counter protest against the “Unite The Right” white supremacy marches that took place in the city.

Zach D. Roberts captured that photo that shows Harris being beaten with poles by the white nationalists.

The shocking photo immediately went far and wide, and although Harris received multiple injuries, he says that he’s thankful to be alive to tell his story.

 

 “Me and about five of my friends were out protesting. We thought [the racists] left, but at one point they came back. Everyone was exchanging words with the group, but then the KKK and white supremacists just rushed us,” Harris told The Root in an interview.

“They were beating me with poles. I have eight staples in my head, a broken wrist and a chipped tooth,” Harris said.

Harris said if it wasn’t for his friends who noticed him under the pile of white supremacists and helping him, he probably wouldn’t be alive to tell his story. Harris is in the process of pressing charges and the photographer who took the photo is helping his mother identify the racists who took part in the attack.

After the photo made its rounds on social media, many people noticed that the parking garage where the assault took place was right near the Charlottesville police department. And of course, we know how this story goes.

“The beating happened right beside the police department, and no police were there to help me at all. My mother is now thinking about suing the city of Charlottesville,” Harris said.

Although freedom of speech protects even the most vile of humans, Harris is still confused as to why the town let the rally happen.

“I think for them to be allowed to come here and protest is really crazy. How do you expect the KKK to come to your city to protest, and them not be violent? I understand everyone is entitled to their freedom of speech, but the government and the mayor made a bad business move. It’s only caused havoc in your own city. It’s crazier that people have the hatred in their heart to want to kill black people,” Harris stated.

Harris’ friends and family created a GoFundMe to help with his medicalexpenses, but there is no amount of money that could take away the trauma the 20-year-old experienced Saturday afternoon.

James Baldwin once said, “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” The violence that erupted in Charlottesville over the last 48 hours has been the face of America since the beginning of time.

It’s gone from being cloaked in white masks to crisp Walmart and Target polos, but until those so-called allies stand up to their racist counterparts, nothing will change.

He Who Laughs Last….Trump May Have Walked Into Impeachment With Comey Dismissal And Subsequent Tweet About Taped Conversations

(SL) – I don’t know what else has to be done before Capitol Hill does what it needs to do. Whether it’s the continuance of business profits while holding office, setting off bombs without consulting Congress, Mike Flynn, Steve Bannon..the list goes on. The Rolling Stone says it best:

We have watched this unfold in the open: Trump has thumbed his nose at custom and the Constitution by refusing to resolve the conflicts of interest that will now shadow his presidency. He has used his Twitter account – a 21st-century bully pulpit – not to unify Americans behind his agenda, but to settle personal scores in a sustained assault on freedom of the press, freedom of assembly and freedom of speech.

Trump has installed an inner circle that aims to marginalize millions of our countrymen, even as it seeks to degrade the institutions of our government. Finally, Trump has clutched Russia in a perplexing bear hug. Whether he’s done this out of genuine admiration for its brutal regime, because he’s indebted to its oligarchs, or because Trump has somehow been compromised by former KGB colonel Vladimir Putin we have yet to resolve. For Americans, and for our NATO allies, none of these alternatives will be reassuring.

Republicans in Congress have stood by quietly, almost without objection. They’ve acted as enablers – even as Trump has inserted himself as the ur-chairman of publicly traded companies, blessing their manufacturing plans or tanking their stock prices with a single tweet. Republicans used to object to politicians “picking winners and losers.” Just last July, Speaker Paul Ryan called it “a recipe for a closed economy – for cronyism.”

History will judge this period harshly.

Conflicts of interest
Trump has not released his tax returns. The American public remains in the dark about the debts and deals that could bind the 45th president against the national interest or pervert the foreign policy of the United States.

The lack of transparency matters because Donald Trump has not divested from his businesses. His promises to set up a blind trust and to halt new business deals were both empty. As the director of the U.S. Office of Government Ethics, Walter Shaub, described it, Trump’s decision to hand daily management of the Trump Organization to his adult sons instead is “meaningless from a conflict of interest perspective.”

Sounding more than a bit like Richard Nixon, Trump has proclaimed that “the president can’t have a conflict of interest.” By a lawyerly reading of 18 U.S.C. § 208, that may parse as true – but the claim is false from any moral perspective. The Supreme Court has written that when our leaders “engage in activities which arouse suspicions of corruption,” those office-holders endanger “the very fabric of a democratic society.” Trump, Shaub insisted in remarks delivered January 11th at the Brookings Institution, has failed to rise to the standards “that every president in the past four decades has met.”

In fact, during the transition period, Trump and his children appeared to trade on his status as president-elect: The Trumps have reportedly secured a stalled building permit for a tower in Argentina; Ivanka Trump joined her father in a meeting with the prime minister of Japan, where she has business with a state-backed enterprise; and the Trump Organization’s new leaders, Don Jr. and Eric Trump, took seats at the conference table for a once-in-a lifetime meeting with executives from Facebook, Google, Apple, Amazon, Oracle, Microsoft and others at the “tech summit” convened by their president-elect father at Trump Tower. Even Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, has been pursuing lucrative business deals with foreign investors. Trump has now named Kushner a senior adviser, skirting anti-nepotism laws.

The president’s global business enterprise remains an invitation to corruption – from interests who may try to ingratiate themselves to Trump by leasing his properties, golfing at his resorts or lodging at his hotels, including the new Trump International, down the street from the White House.

Trump’s business conflicts raise not only ethical but constitutional concerns. Can profits earned from foreign governments paying exorbitant sums for luxury rentals, hotel rooms, golf retreats or $24 cocktails be construed as either bribes or “emoluments” (i.e., gifts)? Those would be impeachable offenses under the Constitution.

The Republican Congress could act to place limits on Trump’s ability to profit from his office. Congress could also force Trump to reveal his tax returns, which 74 percent of Americans want him to release. But the only move a Republican from the legislative branch has made on presidential ethics so far is to threaten the independent government watchdog who dared criticize Trump.

This has left our 45th president, in the words of Harvard legal scholar Laurence Tribe, “a walking, talking violation of the constitution from the moment he takes the oath.”

And then there’s Russia.

Steve Bannon Fired From National Security Council Post

(SL) – President Trump on Wednesday removed controversial White House chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon from the National Security Council, part of a sweeping staff reshuffling that elevated military, intelligence and Cabinet officials to greater roles on the council and left Bannon less directly involved in shaping the administration’s day-to-day national security policy.

The Washington Post reports, the restructuring reflects the growing influence of national security adviser H.R. McMaster, an Army three-star general who took over the post after retired general Michael Flynn was ousted in February and who is increasingly asserting himself over the flow of national security information in the White House.

McMaster has become a blunt force within the administration who has made clear to several top officials and the president that he does not want the NSC to have any political elements.

Two senior White House officials said that Bannon’s departure was in no way a demotion and that he had rarely attended meetings since being placed on the council. They and others interviewed spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly on the issue.

In conversations Wednesday afternoon, several Trump associates described Bannon as overstretched, with multiple portfolios within the White House, and said the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, has been paying close attention to how to better use Bannon’s skills as the administration works to recover from a rocky and dramatic first few months.

The Trumpcare Debacle That We Knew Would Happen And How Steve Bannon Wants Trump To Keep Enemies List Behind It

(SL) – Trumpcare had no chance of being implemented because simply put, Healthcare isn’t like turning on a light switch. It’s difficult and not something that can be constructed overnight.

New York Magazine reports,  The American Health Care Act is a truly horrendous piece of legislation. But it did not become the vehicle for the Obamacare repeal effort because Trump, or Ryan, or anybody insisted on it over some other option. It became the repeal bill because nobody in the Republican Party had a better idea.

Reforming the health-care system is an inherently daunting project. What makes health care so resistant to change is that, the worse the system gets, the harder it is to change. More waste means more profit centers with an interest in protecting their income. And more uninsured people means more anxiety for those who do have insurance about losing it, and hence more resistance to change. The political miracle of Obamacare was its ability to design a way to cover the uninsured and to pay for the coverage in a politically viable fashion. The law found a way to solve a political problem that had frustrated would-be reformers for decades.

And they accomplished it against the ruthless opposition of a united party that has used every demagogic method to undermine it — in Washington, in the states, and in the courts.If Republicans had not launched a legal battle to allow states to deny Medicaid coverage to their citizens, and then cruelly taken up the opportunity to do so; sabotaged small but crucial risk-corridor payments to encourage insurer participation; and denied funds for outreach to exchange customers, it would be functioning better than it is. Still, it is functioning.