Before arriving at the White House, I’m certain Donald Trump was not accustomed to having folks follow, track and hold him to his word about most issues.
He was the boss of the Trump Organization, and if you wanted to work there, you just let the boss be the boss.
But as president, the Trumpster is finding out that, yes, folks are paying attention and we keep a record of everything you say.
So there wasn’t any difficulty involved when the Donald tweeted this morning that former FBI Director James Comey “was not fired because of the phony Russia investigation” to jump back a year when he told Lester Holt of NBC News that he specifically fired Comey over the “Russia thing.”
#Liar
By the way, this is why Donald doesn’t give press conferences any more. He would most certainly be asked about his self-inflicted contradictions.
I know he was able to correctly pick out pictures of animals on a test, but there are days I’m not so sure about his mental competence.
Slippery James Comey, the worst FBI Director in history, was not fired because of the phony Russia investigation where, by the way, there was NO COLLUSION (except by the Dems)!
Well, not all of them. He loves the folks at Rasmussen polling because they consistently show him with a higher approval rating than other polling firms. Higher to the tune of an average of 5 points.
Today, the Trumpster took to Twitter to boast of his 50% approval rating:
Rasmussen just came out at 51% Approval despite the Fake News Media. They were one of the three most accurate on Election Day. Just about the most inaccurate were CNN and ABC News/Washington Post, and they haven’t changed (get new pollsters). Much of the media is a Scam!
But it’s important to note that there are reasons why Rasmussen shows a higher Trump approval result.
According to The Washington Post, Rasmussen’s methodology involves only polling likely voters instead of registered voters. That one aspect contributes to a “right lean” of the results since, generally speaking, Republicans tend to be more likely to vote than Democrats.
Also, Rasmussen only polls via landlines. In the past ten years, a lot of younger people have switched to life with only a cell phone. So, those folks never get contacted by Rasmussen.
Younger people tend to be more liberal and older tend to be more conservative. The math isn’t hard here.
Looking at that “right lean” effect, as The Washington Post notes, during Obama’s administration Rasmussen averaged 3.9 points below other polling organizations in terms of approval numbers. And, during Trump’s time in office they have averaged 4.9 points higher than others.
If you want to get a better sense of where Trump’s true approval numbers are, it makes sense to look at the Real Clear Politics average of polls tracking Trump’s approval rating:
Click image to enlarge
As you can see, Rasmussen is by far the highest rating Trump gets among polls. But the average shows him at 42.1% approval which right in the range he’s been since taking office.
But knock yourself out, Donnie. If you wanna happy dance around your one decent poll, go for it.
This Washington Post article is insightful to understand how some polling firms differ in how they measure approval ratings.
On a lighter note, The New Yorker’s brilliant satirist Andy Borowitz “reports” that Donald Trump’s big military parade will not be possible as hundreds of thousands of military service members have suddenly developed bone spurs making marching in a parade simply impossible.
The Pentagon has turned down Donald J. Trump’s request for a grand military parade in Washington, D.C., citing a sudden outbreak of bone spurs that would prevent men and women in uniform from participating.
Harland Dorrinson, a Pentagon spokesman, said that, within an hour of Trump’s request, more than a hundred thousand military personnel complained that they were suffering from acute cases of bone spurs that would make marching in such a parade a painful ordeal.
“In the history of the U.S. military, we have never experienced a bone-spur epidemic of this magnitude,” the spokesman said. “Regrettably, however, we have no choice but to issue thousands of deferments.”
Shortly after former FBI Director James Coney’s interview with ABC News‘ George Stephanopoulos last night, a second, in-depth conversation with Comey was released that had been conducted by USA Today reporters Susan Page and Kevin Johnson.
“I actually believe he’s morally unfit to be president,” Comey told USA TODAY in an exclusive interview Friday at his home in the Virginia suburbs outside Washington. He called that characterization appropriate for “someone who is able to see moral equivalence in (white nationalist protests in) Charlottesville or to speak and treat women like they’re pieces of meat and to lie constantly and who appears to lack an external moral framework” of religion or philosophy or history.
In an even more explosive comment, Comey said it would be less than honest to rule out the possibility that Trump had been compromised by one of the United States’ primary foreign adversaries.
“It’s hard to explain some things without at least leaving your mind open to that being a possibility,” said Comey, who has served three presidents in senior posts. “There’s a non-zero possibility that the Russians have some, some sway over him that is rooted in his personal experience, and I don’t know whether that’s the business about the activity in a Moscow hotel room or finances or something else.”
For the real political junkies, you can listen to the full interview between Comey and USA Today below.
Donald Trump must have been tired this morning as he only managed one lame attack tweet on former FBI Director James Comey after Comey’s highly-publicized interview with 20/20‘s George Stephanopolous last night.
Comey’s new book, A Higher Loyalty, which chronicles Comey’s adventures in “Trump Land,” hits book stores tomorrow.
Trump spent much of the weekend repeatedly attacking Comey ahead of the interview and as excerpts of the book were released to several news outlets.
To be honest, I’m not sure Trump even drafted this tweet as “exoneration” doesn’t seem like a likely word in the Trump lexicon. Although he seemed to be going for brevity and economy as he lumped equally-despised former Andrew McCabe in with the same tweet.
But then, maybe Trump is just fatigued from all his current scandals.
Golf. Golf would be the answer, no?
Comey drafted the Crooked Hillary exoneration long before he talked to her (lied in Congress to Senator G), then based his decisions on her poll numbers. Disgruntled, he, McCabe, and the others, committed many crimes!
Donald Trump woke up this Sunday morning on a mission – to help James Comey sell as many books as possible when Comey’s memoir, A Higher Loyalty, is released on Tuesday.
From some tried-and-true “Crooked Hillarys” and a “Slimeball!” thrown in for good measure, Trump tried to create his own reality denying he ever asked Comey for his loyalty.
Since Trump now likes the phrase “Mission Accomplished!” so much, I’ll point out that his Twitter rant took Comey right to #1 on the Amazon book charts.
Check out the fevered meltdown below.
Unbelievably, James Comey states that Polls, where Crooked Hillary was leading, were a factor in the handling (stupidly) of the Clinton Email probe. In other words, he was making decisions based on the fact that he thought she was going to win, and he wanted a job. Slimeball!
The big questions in Comey’s badly reviewed book aren’t answered like, how come he gave up Classified Information (jail), why did he lie to Congress (jail), why did the DNC refuse to give Server to the FBI (why didn’t they TAKE it), why the phony memos, McCabe’s $700,000 & more?
Comey throws AG Lynch “under the bus!” Why can’t we all find out what happened on the tarmac in the back of the plane with Wild Bill and Lynch? Was she promised a Supreme Court seat, or AG, in order to lay off Hillary. No golf and grandkids talk (give us all a break)!
While Donald Trump was ordering the missile strike on Syria last night, McClatchyDC was reporting that Special Counsel Robert Mueller has found evidence that Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, did travel to Prague in August/September of 2016 at the height of the presidential campaign.
Confirmation of the trip would lend credence to a retired British spy’s report that Cohen strategized there with a powerful Kremlin figure about Russian meddling in the U.S. election.
It would also be one of the most significant developments thus far in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of whether the Trump campaign and the Kremlin worked together to help Trump win the White House. Undercutting Trump’s repeated pronouncements that “there is no evidence of collusion,” it also could ratchet up the stakes if the president tries, as he has intimated he might for months, to order Mueller’s firing.
Cohen denied the allegations last year saying he has “never been to Prague” in his life. He famously produced his passport which showed no stamp of entry into Prague.
But the new reports posit that Cohen may have traveled on private jet to Germany and entered the Czech Republic from there. Because both countries are in the so-called Schengen Area in which 26 nations operate with open borders, a passport would not have been necessary for entry.
The infamous Steele dossier has been declared “debunked” in great part by Trump loyalists because of Cohen’s passport defense. The logic seems to be if that one aspect of the report was untrue then the entire dossier must be a lie.
“Bad reporting, bad information and bad story,” Cohen tweeted, calling out McClatchy reporter Peter Stone by name.
“No matter how many times or ways they write it, I have never been to Prague. I was in LA with my son. Proven!”
Bad reporting, bad information and bad story by same reporter Peter Stone @McClatchyDC. No matter how many times or ways they write it, I have never been to Prague. I was in LA with my son. Proven! https://t.co/ra7nwjUA0X
Rumor has been swirling for months that Cohen flew into Germany by private jet in early September 2016 and went on to Prague by train or bus—now Mueller has evidence it may be true >> https://t.co/EvUoQB5fBG
BREAKING: From Day 1 this feed has been about the Steele Dossier—and tonight the *one* allegedly false item in the Dossier now appears to *also* be true. So the current status of the Dossier is that much of it has been proven true and none of it dispelled. https://t.co/ipa207fydH
As excerpts from former FBI Director James Comey’s upcoming book A Higher Loyalty are hitting the media, the predictable Trump Twitter rant we’ve all expected has arrived.
And it’s everything you would expect from the Trumpster.
Of course, Trump labels Comey a “LEAKER & LIAR” but along the way Trump also accuses Comey of leaking classified information (not true) and that he lied to Congress (again, a big nope).
Trump really gets into the school yard dirt with a good old “untruthful slime ball” tag and proclaims it was a “great honor” to fire Comey from the FBI.
Ah, Donald, you really rose to the occasion here.
James Comey is a proven LEAKER & LIAR. Virtually everyone in Washington thought he should be fired for the terrible job he did-until he was, in fact, fired. He leaked CLASSIFIED information, for which he should be prosecuted. He lied to Congress under OATH. He is a weak and…..
….untruthful slime ball who was, as time has proven, a terrible Director of the FBI. His handling of the Crooked Hillary Clinton case, and the events surrounding it, will go down as one of the worst “botch jobs” of history. It was my great honor to fire James Comey!
It’s worth noting that on the same day Trump issued his blistering “liar/leaker” attack on Comey, Trump actually pardoned a convicted liar/leaker, former Vice President Dick Cheney’s aide, Scooter Libby.
Of course, folks in the Twitterverse had some choice reactions:
Yet another instance of Donald Trump proving he’s utterly incapable of being presidential. Stop with the name calling. Stop with the bullying. And stop with your Hillary Clinton obsession. You’re not being paid to tweet. Do your job! https://t.co/YiEbbybX62— Sen Dianne Feinstein (@SenFeinstein) April 13, 2018
This is about as personally cornered as Trump has been since “Access Hollywood” weekend
.@realDonaldTrump attacking @Comey , calling him an “untruthful slime ball” isn’t fighting back or standing tough. It is a failure to uphold the prestige of the Presidency and show restraint in the face of criticism. Reality TV stars may thrive on one-liners, but Presidents don’t
President Trump tweets today that Comey “leaked CLASSIFIED information.” There is no support for that claim, as we wrote once before. https://t.co/qp5Vc3CO2F
More news on the Trump “silencing” front as multiple sources are now reporting that a former doorman for Trump World Tower was apparently paid $30,000 in the late 80s to stay quiet about rumors that Donald Trump had a relationship with a former housekeeper.
The rumors, first reported by Ronan Farrow for The New Yorker, allege the relationship produced a child.
Late in 2015, a former Trump Tower doorman named Dino Sajudin met with a reporter from American Media, Inc., the publisher of the National Enquirer, at a McDonald’s in Pennsylvania.
A few weeks earlier, Sajudin had signed a contract with A.M.I., agreeing to become a source and to accept thirty thousand dollars for exclusive rights to information he had been told: that Donald Trump, who had launched his Presidential campaign five months earlier, may have fathered a child with a former employee in the late nineteen-eighties.
Sajudin declined to comment for this story. However, six current and former A.M.I. employees, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they feared legal retaliation by the company, said that Sajudin had told A.M.I. the names of the alleged mistress and child.
The New Yorker says it has no evidence that Trump fathered a child by the woman.
The payment to Sajudin would mark the third payment meant to silence embarrassing information about Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign, taking into account allegations from former Playboy model Karen McDougal and porn star Stormy Daniels.
Sajudin says he passed a lie detector test regarding the rumors at the time of the transaction claiming high-level Trump employees, including Trump’s head of security, Matthew Calamari, had shared the story with him.
A.M.I. acknowledged the payment to Sajudin through company-owned sister website Radar Online today.
As the reports have dominated much of today’s news, Sajudin issued a statement to CNN today which read:
“Today I awoke to learn that a confidential agreement I had with AMI [The National Enquirer] with regard to a story about President Trump had been leaked to the press. I can confirm that while working at Trump World Tower, I was instructed not to criticize President Trump’s former housekeeper due to a prior relationship she had with President Trump which produced a child.”
While sources at A.M.I. say they didn’t have much confidence in the allegations, they found it unusual that the company would write a $30,000 check for a “catch and kill” story.
Once source told The New Yorker, “It’s unheard of to give a guy who calls A.M.I.’s tip line big bucks for information he is passing on secondhand. We didn’t pay thousands of dollars for non-stories, let alone tens of thousands. It was a highly curious and questionable situation.”
All of this is of interest when viewed through the lens of the recent raid of Trump lawyer Michael Cohen’s office where FBI agents searched and seized info pertaining to “hush money” payments.
Not so much about the payoff itself by A.M.I., but the attempt to coverup the story in order to help Trump during the election.
Donald Trump backtracked today on his previous Twitter rant threatening Russia and Syria with a missile strike saying that an airstrike wasn’t necessarily imminent.
“Never said when an attack on Syria would take place,” Trump tweeted this morning. “Could be very soon or not so soon at all! In any event, the United States, under my Administration, has done a great job of ridding the region of ISIS.”
Trump curiously asked for praise from Americans for doing his job: “Where is our ’Thank you America?’”
Trump yesterday:
Russia vows to shoot down any and all missiles fired at Syria. Get ready Russia, because they will be coming, nice and new and “smart!” You shouldn’t be partners with a Gas Killing Animal who kills his people and enjoys it!
Never said when an attack on Syria would take place. Could be very soon or not so soon at all! In any event, the United States, under my Administration, has done a great job of ridding the region of ISIS. Where is our “Thank you America?”
