President Donald Trump

[Bernie Brewer]

I watched it lived as it happened and my take was it was a shit show . To me again it goes back to you reap what you sow. Trump from the get go - rally’s , presser’s ... it has been highly confrontational. From lock her up. Get him out of here and punch him I pay the fine. So what do you expect at a presser? CNN wasn’t the only News person to get into with Trump . Yahoo reporter and others. Bad form? I would say yes if it was Bush / Obama - for Trump it is the WWE show HE brings to the table. I think he does it for distraction. Don’t look at the Ass kicking I just got in the house let’s spend time discussing the News conference / or me firing Session. He does it every time and the Media falls for it.

By the way who stole the terrible caravan . Fox News or trump hasn’t mentioned it since Tuesday.

I watched it live as well. Excellent observation. I agree completely.

[Sour Masher]

What to Repubs think of Trump firing Sessions, bypassing Rosenstein, and making the constitutionally questionable decision (to put it most mildly) of appointing the non-Senate confirmed Whitaker, who has been openly critical of Mueller and the investigation? Is there anyone willing to argue it isn't a blatant attempt to impede the Mueller investigation and cover his own ass? How is this behavior acceptable to anyone? As for who cowrote the NYT Op-Ed that calls out this move as not only shady as fuck but actually illegal, well, it is none other than George Conway, hubby too Kellyanne.

To be a fly on the wall for the Conway family dinner convos.

[hacko]

What to Repubs think of Trump firing Sessions, bypassing Rosenstein, and making the constitutionally questionable decision (to put it most mildly) of appointing the non-Senate confirmed Whitaker, who has been openly critical of Mueller and the investigation? Is there anyone willing to argue it isn't a blatant attempt to impede the Mueller investigation and cover his own ass? How is this behavior acceptable to anyone? As for who cowrote the NYT Op-Ed that calls out this move as not only shady as fuck but actually illegal, well, it is none other than George Conway, hubby too Kellyanne.

To be a fly on the wall for the Conway family dinner convos.

How Trump doesn’t Shitcan her for not controlling her husband is beyond me. He must not know they are married. I can’t believe no one ever ask her about what her husband writes either.

[hacko]

By the way- I might have missed this part of the discussion but - wow on Trump throwing some of the defeated GOP losers under the bus. Nice guy to be your leader.

[MagSeven]

Nice guy to be your leader.

He's not a leader.

[hacko]

He's not a leader.

He might not be a leader in a good way but he is a leader. It is no longer The Republican Party but the Trump Party and he has 46% of the country and is leading the R’s in the Senate/House and Party by their nads/ SC picks.
Unfortunately the media and the Dems believe more like your statement and that has been their downfall. They can’t believe ANYONE would follow him.

[chancellor]

What to Repubs think of Trump firing Sessions, bypassing Rosenstein, and making the constitutionally questionable decision (to put it most mildly) of appointing the non-Senate confirmed Whitaker, who has been openly critical of Mueller and the investigation? Is there anyone willing to argue it isn't a blatant attempt to impede the Mueller investigation and cover his own ass? How is this behavior acceptable to anyone? As for who cowrote the NYT Op-Ed that calls out this move as not only shady as fuck but actually illegal, well, it is none other than George Conway, hubby too Kellyanne. :

Let’s review the legality first since, alas, both George Conway and John Yoo are incorrect, and had they bothered to call Mr. Stephanopoulos, he’d likely have enlightened them. Specifically, Whittaker was put in place via the Vacancies Reform Act. This act allows for the President to name an officer to serve for up to 210 days, as long as that officer had served in a high enough ranking position (and, yes, the AGs chief of staff qualifies) and had been in that position for 90 days (again, he qualifies). That’s it.

And why could George Stephanopoulos enlightened them? Because the Vacancies Act was passed during the Clinton Administration in 1998. While George wasn’t officially around in ‘98, he was still actively advising the president.

[Sour Masher]

Let’s review the legality first since, alas, both George Conway and John Yoo are incorrect, and had they bothered to call Mr. Stephanopoulos, he’d likely have enlightened them. Specifically, Whittaker was put in place via the Vacancies Reform Act. This act allows for the President to name an officer to serve for up to 210 days, as long as that officer had served in a high enough ranking position (and, yes, the AGs chief of staff qualifies) and had been in that position for 90 days (again, he qualifies). That’s it.

And why could George Stephanopoulos enlightened them? Because the Vacancies Act was passed during the Clinton Administration in 1998. While George wasn’t officially around in ‘98, he was still actively advising the president.

Fair enough. Legality aside, do you agree the move looks shady? What will your opinion be if Whittaker shuts down Mueller?

[Bernie Brewer]

Fair enough. Legality aside, do you agree the move looks shady? What will your opinion be if Whittaker shuts down Mueller?

While I will agree that the dismissal of Sessions changes the dynamic a bit, as Mueller will have a different overseer, the Dems have been ruminating over the Probe being ended by Trump almost since it began 18 months ago. I find it kind of silly that the Dems want Whittaker to recuse himself because he made some pointed comments about the investigation previously. He’s a Republican and a Trump confidant. Who else would Trump appoint to be acting AG? Rosenstein who he clearly doesn’t like or trust? Maybe the Dems would rather he quickly nominate Chris Christie and run a quick confirmationprocess. Or, hey what about the Mayor? I’m afraid that unless the Dems appoint the AG for Trump, they’ll always demand recusal and ruminate about Trump bringing the Mueller probe to an “early” end. 18 Months! Early?

Only one Dem voted to confirm Sessions and now they all think it was a mistake to fire him! A marriage of convenience if I ever saw one.

Personally speaking, I have no idea if there is much to the investigation or not. The four charged and have plead guilty were charged with things unrelated to the Russians. Tax evasion, lying to the FBI, etc. I want it to wrap up soon too and bring the charges if there are any against Trump. If not, for the love of God can we just move on!

[DMT]

I'm happy Sessions is gone. And I don't expect them to shut down the probe because it's probably close to being wrapped up. But they weren't just innocuous statements by Whittaker let's be real. He went on CNN and directly explained how one could undermine the probe by reducing resources allotted to the investigation.

[cardboardbox]

Fair enough. Legality aside, do you agree the move looks shady? What will your opinion be if Whittaker shuts down Mueller?

If Mueller insists on going on this treasure hunt of activities not related to RUSSIA! then he should get shut down. If he can focus on just RUSSIA! then he should be allowed to finish.

[Bernie Brewer]

I'm happy Sessions is gone. And I don't expect them to shut down the probe because it's probably close to being wrapped up. But they weren't just innocuous statements by Whittaker let's be real. He went on CNN and directly explained how one could undermine the probe by reducing resources allotted to the investigation.

See we can agree, even if it’s only half of what you wrote. The first two sentences I’m in lock step with you. As the the third and fourth, he was asked to give an opinion and he did. He went so far as to say how it could be undermined. He did not say he would undermine it if he were AG. But Trump probably liked hearing that regardless.

[cardboardbox]

this is Banana Republic level of bullshit.....oh, and in no way does CNN = Fox News

you're right, CNN is worse.

[cardboardbox]

cbb are you going to admit that it was doctored or continue to play dumb?

dmt, are you going to admit that it wasn't doctored or continue to play dumb?

[frae]

Ok not debating the issue again, but specifically the video she tweeted the problem is the official Pres Sec. account retweeted a video from someone who works for a site that we have to agree is not credible when it comes to information. I've read a few tweet threads by video editors and a few articles I think in the end both sides are right about the video. He took the video from a Gif and edited it by zooming in. Since he works for Info Wars it is easy to get caught up in he intentionally cut frames, but by using a non HD quality video format in Gif and then by zooming into to show what he wanted you lose frames and those frames lost when put on a short loop will show an object go from point a to point b faster. So he didn't go into his editing software and actually cut video out himself, but by using the gif format and by zooming in he lost quality and lost frames. In the end if he tweeted it out himself and it never got picked up by Sanders it is a blip on the radar in the debate but because she used it instead of just using the CSPAN original footage it is murky. This guy may explain it better than me...

"Charlie Warzel messaged Watson, who told him that he had simply zoomed in one section of the footage, but otherwise left it as is. That led to debates about whether a simple change to the frame rate of the video transformed it to make it appear as if Acosta were the aggressor. As Warzel notes, it’s complicated:

Watson’s defense is an issue of semantics — that he altered the video but did not “doctor” it to show something that wasn’t there. Unfortunately, establishing just how the video was changed is complicated. The original video file was created by Watson from a gif file that the Daily Wire tweeted. It’s not out of the realm of possibility that the image was distorted by that process. More importantly, the process of converting videos to gifs often results in losing frames from the original video file (in the case of the Daily Wire gif, that means there’s likely frames missing from the original CSPAN video it was made from).

It’s all confusing. There’s even an example in which all parties are mostly correct. Watson’s clip is different than the CSPAN clip because it was taken from a gif and thus missing frames, which could cause the Acosta movement to look faster than it actually was. In that case, one can argue that the video was made faster. If that’s the case, there’s also an argument that Watson is telling the truth — he didn’t personally speed up the video, he just took a clip that was missing frames."