Morality is not determined by the church you attend nor the faith you embrace. It is determined by the quality of your character and the positive impact you have on those you meet along your journey
Ex-FBI Director James Comey compared to President Trump to a "mob boss" in a taped interview with ABC News, according to a promotional video released Wednesday.
“How strange is it for you to sit here and compare the president to a mob boss?” host George Stephanopoulos asks Comey in a clip shared by ABC News.
The preview also shows Stephanopoulos asking Comey if he believes President Trump obstructed justice, or if he thinks the president should be impeached.
Comey does not speak at all in the promotional clip.
This is just the beginning of the media blitz that will precede the release of Comey's new book "A Higher Loyalty: Truth Lies & Leadership."
Comey also has interviews scheduled with CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, and PBS.
I still have a lot of issues with how Comey interfered in the 2016 election, but there is no way I am not reading this book or watching the upcoming interviews.
Comey has a particular insight into Donald Trump, and his response to the Russia investigation that I do not feel can be ignored.
The Senate Judiciary Committee will soon release the transcript of its interview with Donald Trump Jr. as well as other witness testimony related to a controversial 2016 meeting at Trump Tower with a Kremlin-linked lawyer, Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said Thursday.
Grassley's comments Thursday come the day after two Democrats on the committee publicly pressed for the release of the panel's closed-door interview transcripts to special counsel Robert Mueller. Even as partisan disputes roil the House's Russia investigation, Grassley's alignment with Democrats on releasing the transcripts signals that the Senate — for now, at least — remains in a more collaborative mode.
The committee is finished with work related to the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting, attended by President Donald Trump's eldest son and his son-in-law Jared Kushner as well as campaign chairman Paul Manafort, Grassley said. "So, now it’s time to start releasing the transcripts of all witness interviews we have done related to that meeting. Let’s get them out there for everyone to see."
In addition to Trump Jr., who sat for an interview in September, the committee also has received written responses from Natalia Veselnitskaya, the Kremlin-connected Russian lawyer who said the Trump team pressed her for negative information about Hillary Clinton during the 2016 meeting.
Well this should prove to be some interesting reading, assuming of course all the juicy parts have not be redacted.
Apparently the committee has still not managed to get Jared Kushner locked down for an interview, which is too bad because somehow I think he would crack the minute somebody turned off the air conditioning.
The problem of course is that even if he could suggest that Blumenthal's past misstatements disqualify him as a legitimate source for these reports (A rather ironic notion considering Trump's slippery relationship with the truth.) the problem is that Blumenthal is by no means the only source.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal said Wednesday that Judge Neil Gorsuch, Trump's nominee, told him he found Trump's attack on a federal judge on Twitter "disheartening" and "demoralizing."
Within a half-hour, Gorsuch spokesman Ron Bonjean, who was tapped by the White House to head communications for Gorsuch, confirmed that the nominee, Gorsuch, used those words in his meeting with Blumenthal. Several other senators, including Republican Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska, later relayed similar accounts of Gorsuch forcefully criticizing Trump's public attacks on the judiciary branch.
So is Trump suggesting that all of these folks are "misrepresenting" the facts? INCLUDING the GOP Senator and Gorsuch's own spokesman?
And speaking of misrepresentation, this was Trump's second tweet on this topic:
Chris Cuomo, in his interview with Sen. Blumenthal, never asked him about his long-term lie about his brave "service" in Vietnam. FAKE NEWS!
During an interview with POLITICO’s Glenn Thrush, NBC’s Chuck Todd pondered some of the more striking observations he has made about Donald Trump after covering the mogul as much as he has.
The wide-range interview covered a variety of topics, but when the president-elect came up, Todd said there were a few ticks he noticed about Trump where “[It] drives me crazy.” According to Todd, Trump is so concerned about his visual image that he will frequently watch clips of himself with the sound off.
Todd quoted a source close to Trump who said that whenever the mogul finishes an interview, he’ll ask about how he looked, but not as much about how he sounded or what he said.
“The amount of time he spends after the interview is over with the sound off — he wants to see what it all looked like. He will watch the whole thing on mute,” said Todd. “He’s a very, visual guy. He thinks this way, and look, it’s an important insight in just understanding him. The visual stuff is very real beyond just himself.”
Hey look, there is something that I have in common with Donald Trump.
I also turn off the sound when I see him on TV.
Maybe he hates the sound of his voice as much as I do.
The article suggests that the reason might be based on advice that Roger Ailes gave him as he used to also watch potential hosts give interviews with the sound off. Probably so he could imagine them saying things like "Oh Roger it's so big," or " I find a man with six chins and the body of Jabba the Hut to be such a turn on."
Personally I think it is because Trump is more concerned about the camera capturing an unflattering image of him, like this one:
Or this one:
Or this one:
Than he is that he might say something stupid.
Which of course explains every interview and tweet he has ever sent.
"But this is the president-elect’s position right now and I would say he has been incredibly gracious and magnanimous to Secretary Clinton at a time when, for whatever reason, her folks are saying they will join in a recount to try to somehow undo the 70 plus electoral votes that he beat her by. I mean this — you know, I was asked on CNN and elsewhere, goodness a thousand times, will Donald Trump accept the election results? And now you’ve got the Democrats and Jill Stein saying they do not accept the election results? She congratulated him and conceded to him on election night. I was right there. And the idea that we are going to drag this out now where the president-elect has been incredibly magnanimous to the Clintons and to the Obamas is incredible."
“What a pack of sore losers,” she said in a statement on Saturday. “After asking Mr. Trump and his team a million times on the trail, ‘Will HE accept the election results?’ it turns out Team Hillary and their new BFF Jill Stein can’t accept reality.”
“Rather than adhere to the tradition of graciously conceding and wishing the winner well, they’ve opted to waste millions of dollars and dismiss the democratic process. The people have spoken. Time to listen up. #YesYourPresident,” Conway said.
And then both she and Reince Priebus talked on NBC and Fox News about the recount:
Speaking on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday, Conway said the recount effort was “confounding and disappointing.” And Reince Priebus, the incoming White House chief of staff, said on “Fox News Sunday” that the planned recount would serve “only to divide this country when we need to come together.”
No, actually this recount can serve to bring the country together by proving beyond any doubt that Trump legitimately won this election, (You know aside from all of that Russian hacking, unnecessary GOP investigations, and FBI putting their thumb on the scale of course.)
The only way it would further divide the country would be if.....Oh, so perhaps there is something to find here?
"I would like to promise and pledge to all of my voters and supporters and to all of the people of the United States, that I will totally accept the results of this great and historic presidential election - if I win," he said.
He added he would accept "a clear election result," but reserved the right to contest or file a legal challenge in the case of a questionable result.
And that was BEFORE the election even took place.
Yet now that he has "won," he would fault the Hillary campaign, or anybody else, for wanting to request a recount?
I guess it really doesn't matter that my irony meter has been broken for over a year now, because this would probably just break in anyhow.
Kurtz recounts from her book the charge that there were pro-Donald Trump TV hosts who “would arrange with Trump in advance to ask him certain critical questions or do certain hits on him so they would appear to have some credibility.”
He asked if she means they were “play-acting.” Kelly responded, “Yes. It was acting.
”She confirmed it happened at more than one network, but could not divulge any more information. “But trust me,” she added, ‘this did happen, and it’s been confirmed to me by more than one television executive.”
Now you will notice that Kelly did not name any one TV host, nor even identify the station they may or may not have worked for.
However somebody got a wee bit defensive. And by "wee bit" I mean lost their shit completely.
No idea who @megynkelly is talking about. When I asked ?'s about Justices, The wall, Refugees, Obamacare, economy etc I wanted real answers! https://t.co/AZxax2rpur
Curious who she was referring to. I am transparent, I want to defeat Isis, protect the homeland and get people out of poverty and working! https://t.co/tranPp7y2k
I'm just curious. All year long I talked about the number of people not working in poverty on food stamps I wanted real answers and got them https://t.co/62F0etYnxS
I would also like to know what people were offered by DT, I was never offered a thing. Never stayed at a DT property played a DT golf course https://t.co/62F0etYnxS
Courtesy of Mother Jones: Nearly four decades is a long time to be hearing the same stuff about being a woman in power. The nauseating proof comes in the form of a new video that was put together by National Memo, a news and politics website, and posted to YouTube on Thursday. It tracks almost 40 years of Hillary Clinton—as first lady, senator, and presidential candidate—and the sexist ideas about women in public life put to her in numerous media appearances. Some of the interviewers appear to be adopting sexist tropes to humanize Clinton or to highlight inequalities, while other commentators are downright nasty. Together, it plays like a relentless heartbeat of gendered criticism.
You know sometimes I look at Hillary Clinton and I think "The poor woman just looks exhausted sometimes."
But you know dealing with this kind of garbage for four decades would probably destroy most people, and the fact that Hillary Clinton may look a little tired sometimes but is still plugging away and working for the people of this country should be admirable by anybody's standards.
Melania Trump on Tuesday defended her husband, Donald Trump, against a comparison between him and Adolf Hitler, arguing his campaign is about uniting the country.
Trump also said a GQ reporter who incurred anti-semitic harassment and threats following a profile of the presumptive Republican nominee's wife brought it on herself by penning the feature.
"We know the truth. He's not Hitler. He wants to help America. He wants to unite people. They think he doesn't but he does. Even with the Muslims, it's temporary," Trump told Dujour.com. "Maybe he needs to say it in a softer way. He doesn't go after religions. He feels like we need to know who's coming to this country. If not, we don't have a country. That's how he feels. We see how he is, and he wants to unite the country and bring people together and bring jobs back."
Okay so to be clear Donald Trump is NOT Hitler, he just wants to control one religion's ability to move freely around the country, and if a reporter wants to spare themselves attacks from his supporters they better be careful what they write about him.
In an interview with CBS that aired Wednesday, Trump said she found the Times report "disturbing" and challenged a claim that the real-estate mogul, who is now the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, groped one of his employees.
"I'm not in every interaction my father has, but he's not a groper. That's not who he is," Ivanka said.
In the Times report, a female employee who worked with Trump at an Atlantic City beauty pageant described a "very traumatic incident" during which the mogul allegedly groped her under a dinner table.
Okay so there you have it Donald Trump is not Hitler and according to his daughter he is NOT a groper.
And after all, wouldn't she know?
Glad to have put all of those nasty rumors to rest, aren't you?
Former ABC News anchor Ted Koppel said on Wednesday that his Fox News counterpart Bill O’Reilly has undermined journalists’ ability to interview Donald Trump.
“I’ve interviewed him a number of times,” O’Reilly said of the Republican front-runner. “Not an easy interview. How would you do it?”
“You and I have talked about this general subject many times over the years. It’s irrelevant how I would do it,” Koppel replied. “You know who made it irrelevant? You did. You have changed the television landscape over the past 20 years — you took it from being objective and dull to subjective and entertaining. And in this current climate, it doesn’t matter what the interviewer asks him; Mr. Trump is gonna say whatever he wants to say, as outrageous as it may be.”
The real estate mogul’s audience, Koppel added, was not even a television audience, but one better suited for Twitter.
“They deal in messages of 140 characters or less, which keeps it nice and simple,” he explained.
Good for Ted Koppel to throw this is O'Reilly's face.
Of course it clearly had no impact because O'Reilly just keeps right on asking hims questions as if he didn't just blame the destruction of the fourth estate on him and others at Fox News.
Actually Fox News is responsible for far more than the end of journalism in this country, they are also responsible for how deeply ideological the country is right now, the rise of the Tea Party, and of course the creation of Donald Trump.
Personally I think that Roger Ailes, Rupert Murdoch, and the talking heads at Fox News are guilty of sedition if not outright treason.
An d I don't really think that is an exaggeration.
You know I was thinking about what might have possibly given such hard on to go after Williams, and my bet is that it goes ALL the way back to October of 2008.
You remember this interview, right?
(Did you notice the question about her medical records at the 1:39 mark? Yeah, whatever happened to those? And no this does not count.)
This of course was after Palin's disastrous Katie Couric interview when the McCain campaign tried to gain some control over Palin's ignorance and habit of saying whatever stupid thing popped into her pea brain.
So during this interview Palin is working hard to hold it together, and yet she cannot help but complain about the media. She also suggests that people are making things up about her family.
Really?
Personally I think this is when Palin REALLY started to despise the media and perhaps that it why certain news people, like Katie Couric, Charlie Gibson, and Brian Williams occupy a permanent place on her shit list.
Piers Morgan brought up the subject of climate change (something that wasn’t discussed during the debate) for which Bill Nye once again offered a scientific explanation about planetary warming being a cause for storms, whereas Ken Ham went off on a tangent about – well, basically nothing.
Even when Morgan pressed Mr. Ham on whether or not he believed in climate change, he refused to answer. He even went as far as to say, when Morgan said he assumed that he didn’t believe in global warming, “Where have I ever said that, I’ve never said that.” Though Mr. Nye clearly didn’t mind answering for him by saying, “You mentioned it on a radio broadcast.”
This then shifted to Morgan asking Ham if he believes dinosaurs lived with man. Ham responded by saying he believed, “All the land animals were made on day six and Adam and Eve were made on day six,” indicating that he does believe dinosaurs and humans coexisted.
Morgan then pushed him on the fact that we find fossil bones more than 70 millions years old, to which Ham stated, “You don’t find dinosaur bones with labels on them. Where’d you get the 70 millions years from? Prove that to me.”
Holy crap!
It is too bad that the Bible does not seem to cover irony, as the fact that this idiot refuses to believe anything proven by science unless he witnessed it himself, while pimping stone age superstitions as fact, is the very definition of irony.
For fun watch the video with the sound off and simply watch Bill Nye's face as Ham spouts his nonsense. It is highly entertaining.
This is from the series "Why Do People Laugh at Creationists?"
I always love how Palin-bots ask us why we make things up about Palin, when what we actually do is point out the truth about the moron. It is totally not our fault that they cannot accept the facts about their idol.
"Republican leaders should participate and actively prepare for interviews with the Daily Show, the Colbert Report....."
Oh yes, this is a FABULOUS idea! I can only imagine much quicker the youth will move away from the Republican party after watching them flail away in an attempt to make their point while sitting opposite Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert.
Gonna be a bloodbath. A very, very humorous bloodbath.
In his first interview since November's presidential election, Mitt Romney compared the end of the 2012 campaign to the sensation of getting off a roller coaster.
"We were on a roller coaster, exciting and thrilling, ups and downs," Romney told Fox News' Chris Wallace in an interview set to air on Fox News Sunday on March 3. "But the ride ends. And then you get off. And it's not like, oh, can't we be on a roller coaster the rest of our life? It's like, no, the ride's over."
The Fox interview, which Romney and his wife, Ann, sat down for this week, marks the former Republican presidential candidate's first since losing the race to President Barack Obama.
Ann Romney said she believes the couple has done well with the post-election "adjustment," likening it to roles they have had in their church.
"In our church, we're used to serving and you know, you can be in a very high position, but you recognize you're serving," she said. "And then all of a sudden, you're released and you're nobody. And we're used to that."
I hate to break it to Ann Romney but to be honest they always were "nobodies." The only reason that Mitt even had a chance at the nomination is because he appeared to be less irrational then the rest of the GOP field.
Though, I have to say, as the campaign wore on we had reason to question that assumption.
As for that roller coaster analogy, from my perspective it seemed like a coaster that had almost imperceptible ups followed by terrifying, stomach dropping, lows. Who in the their right mind wants to continue riding THAT ride?
By the way here is a recent sighting of the ex-candidate stumbling through a store like an Alzheimer patient, to ask his wife which one of those two cereals is the one in the tiger commercials.
When asked what it was like sitting in the chamber alongside victims of gun violence, Nugent launched into a confusing rant about “engineered recidivism” and the mental health system.
“Our mental health system has failed so thoroughly that people who have threatened lives and conduct themselves in dangerous abhorrent behavior,” he said. “And have been alerted, the officials have been alerted by co-workers, fellow students, mothers and fathers of these mass murderers.”
He took on the president too, criticizing his “predicable, flowery, feel good, save the children, end world hunger insanity.”
“And then I see him either do nothing, or do the opposite,” he said. “I feel horrible that we’re going after my guns, instead of stopping crime and dangerous behavior.”
When challenged by NBC news reporter Luke Russert over comments he made last year, comparing Democrats like Obama, Joe Biden, and Hillary Clinton to coyotes who deserve to be shot, Nugent became agitated, cursing at Russert and calling him a liar in vulgar terms.
And THIS is the sorry excuse for a human being that Rep. Stockman believed was an appropriate choice to bring to the Sate of the Union address? I think that says about all we need to know about Steve Stockman.
By the way my admiration for Luke Russert just went through the roof. He did a great job of trying to get something reasonable out of this bullshit spewing ass clown.
Perfect spokesman for the NRA however. They should definitely keep him in the forefront.
You know watching this all I could think is that the Republicans have managed to completely destroy the public's confidence in journalistic credibility in this country, which is why reporters are so hesitant to call them out on their obvious lies.
And the second thing I thought is that ALL current journalism students should be forced to attend a class taught by Dr. Maddow on how to conduct an actual interview.
First up is Todd, sitting between two actual men, talking about his reality show "Stars Earn Stripes."
Look how uncomfortable he is throughout the entire interview and how he tries to tries to build himself up a little by talking about his Iron Dog wins, and his oilfield job. (I should just mention that we have had women up here who have won the Iditarod, a REALLY difficult race.)
I also noticed that Todd was the only one who had to have the questions repeated, apparently comprehension is not his strong suit.
This next interview was done after Todd's, and has Bristol talking about her upcoming gig on DWTS.
Bristol is clearly her mother's child, referring to God a number of times and claiming that her heart is with the pro-life community. Most of her answers are extremely vague and of course she HAS to act as if her fame is a burden while also hinting that she might pursue a career in politics.
God can you just imagine?
Update: It looks like at least ONE DWTS participant is not staying silent about the obvious:
But according to DWTS pro Karina Smirnoff, there’s one contestant who almost certainly will not be holding the mirror ball trophy above her head at the end of the season: Bristol Palin.
Smirnoff told People, “I’d be very, very surprised if [Bristol Palin] won. Bristol was not known as the best dancer of her season.”
Based on the above statement, Karina Smirnoff definitely wins the award for understatement of the year. She continued, “there was so much controversy when she was on.”
You know I would not be surprised that the free pass is over for Bristol, and that this time she can REALLY get a taste of what it is like to be criticized honestly for her dancing. Not to mention her personality.
People are simply fed up with the Palins, and their grifting bullshit.
I actually sort of sat back and watched this Bain Capital thing play out.
I have been watching reports from MSNBC, CNN, and yes even Fox, to determine if the Democrats went too far in their assessment that Romney is completely lying concerning his role at Bain during this crucial 2000 to 2002 period. I have also read reports from ALL over, many with completely different takes on the story, about who is, and is not, lying about it.
I KNEW that Rachel would do the very best synopsis of the story, and of course she did.
In
the end there seems to be no doubt that Mitt Romeny is a lying scumbag,
and that the CENTRAL reason that he tells America they should elect him in
2012 over President Obama is based on a false premise about his business
acumen.
Here is a little something that Andrew Sullivan also discovered RIGHT IN Bain's 1999 press release:
It was hidden in plain sight as a Bain press release in July 1999. Here's how it described Romney's position at Bain when he says he had no responsibility whatever, despite remaining CEO, Chairman and Sole Owner as far as forms filed with SEC testify:
Bain Capital CEO W. Mitt Romney, currently on a part-time leave of absence to head the Salt Lake City Olympic Committee for the 2002 Games said ...
So Bain now contradicts Romney.
And one of the men mentioned in the press release, Marc Wolpow, described his relationship with Romney when Romney was on a previous part time leave in 1994 when running for Senate (while remaining CEO of Bain):
“I reported directly to Mitt Romney . . . You can’t be CEO of Bain Capital and say, `I really don’t know what my guys were doing,’” Mr. Wolpow said of Mr. Romney role at the company during his leave.
Is anybody else getting a Sarah Palin vibe off of Mittens right about now? I mean didn't he JUST launch a campaign calling President Obama a liar for bringing this Bain Capital connection up, and saying that he was actually there longer than he claimed he was there? Yet at the very same time he was calling the President a liar, he was lying his ass off!
Personally I think THAT is the takeaway here. The man is a chronic liar. He is essentially Sarah Palin in magic underwear!
And just like Trig's never produced birth certificate, Romney has NO intention of ever providing more of his tax returns which would, according to him, prove he is NOT lying. This from Business Insider:
First of all, we've complied with the law. The law requires us to put out a full financial disclosure. That I've done. And then, in addition to that, I've already put out one year of tax returns. We'll put out the next year of tax returns as soon as the accountants have that ready. And that's what we're going to put out.
I know there will always be calls for more. People always want to get more. And, you know, we're putting out what is required plus more that is not required. And those are the two years that people are going to have. And that's all that's necessary for people to understand something about my finances. And, look, if people believe this should be a campaign about attacking one another on a personal basis and go back to the kinds of attacks that were suggested in some campaigns in the past, I don't want to go there.
Look, just like Palin with Trig's birth certificate, the ONLY reason Romney would not be willing to provide the tax returns, which he had no problem providing to John McCain in 2008, is that he KNOWS they will prove that the Obama campaign is telling the truth and that HE is lying.
