President Trump Thread...

[fortsbest]

https://theweek.com/articles/782162/amy-barrett-supreme-court


There are any number of reasons why I think the best choice for the next Supreme Court justice is Judge Amy Coney Barrett, whom President Trump appointed only last year to the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals.

One is that, practically speaking, she has already been through something nearly as taxing as the confirmation process for the high court is likely to be and come through sane.

The hearings on Barrett's nomination were one of the most appalling spectacles in our recent political history. When Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) condescendingly declared that "the dogma lives loudly within you," what she was saying, in essence, is that a person who wishes to serve the American people may check "Catholic" as a box on a census form and perhaps root for the Fighting Irish on Saturday afternoons in the fall if she likes, so long as she does not insist upon doing anything so gauche as believing in all that moth-eaten Romish superstition.

So far from being rejected out of hand by all decent persons as obvious bigotry, Feinstein's charge was taken up by The New York Times and various liberal groups, who attempted to caricature Barrett as some kind of ultra-traditionalist Catholic radical on the basis of her membership in an organization called People of Praise. This body, which is not affiliated with the Church or any Protestant denomination, is devoted to so-called "charismatic" spirituality: guitar hymns and a somewhat gushy attitude towards prayer. Nothing could be further removed from the high-and-dry devotional lives of actual traditionalist Catholics, whose responses to the charismatic movement since its inception have tended to range from "Not my cup of tea, thanks!" to accusations of heresy.

Even more revolting, especially in light of the revelations that were to come some months later, was the windbaggery of now ex-Sen. Al Franken. With his signature lawnmower drone, he accused Barrett of having twice been paid by a "hate group," by which he meant a legal charity that mostly defends rural communities against spurious lawsuits from out-of-town atheists who want to take away their municipal nativity displays and that sort of thing. The Alliance for Defending Freedom has won five cases in front of the Supreme Court, the most recent of which, Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, was decided with a swing vote from the outgoing Justice Anthony Kennedy. If the author of the Obergefell majority opinion is an enabler of "hate" for taking their side, this is the first I have heard of the accusation.

Though none of them said it in as many words, I think it is likely that the three Democratic senators who eventually voted to confirm Barrett — Joe Manchin (W.Va.), Joe Donnelly (Ind.), and, astonishingly, Tim Kaine (Va.) — were as taken aback by their colleagues' behavior as many ordinary Americans were. This to my mind suggests that she will have no trouble getting the necessary votes to be confirmed if she is nominated for another position. It is hard to see how it would be possible for any of them to argue a year later that she is beyond the pale.

If any more proof were necessary of the steeliness of Barrett's character, it is worth pointing out that she has managed to have a successful career as a scholar and teacher while raising seven children. Out of 113 Supreme Court justices in our nation's history, only four have been women, and I for one think we are due for another. This is not only because the present disparity is unjustifiable given the current distribution of the sexes in the legal profession. I would be guilty of dissembling if I did not admit that, like our paper of record and progressive activists throughout this country, I fully expect that sooner or later a court of which Barrett were a member would overturn Roe v. Wade. That a woman should be responsible for undoing this legally sanctioned perversion of the most wholesome relationship in nature, that between a mother and her child, seems to me right in a way that is almost ineffable.

Finally, there is something to be said, I think, for the idea of having someone who did not attend an Ivy League law school on the Supreme Court for a change. Gifted as the faculty and alumni of Harvard and Yale no doubt are, it is difficult to think that the accidents by which a small fraction of would-be American lawyers happen to receive instruction from these august personalities are an exhaustive test of one's ability to interpret statutes.

Barrett, a Notre Dame law grad who continues to teach at her alma mater after being elevated to the Seventh Circuit Court, clerked for Justice Antonin Scalia. She is a well-respected scholar in a variety of areas who has contributed to the nation's most esteemed legal journals. She is a beloved teacher who has three times been voted Notre Dame's "Outstanding Professor of the Year" by graduating classes. Adrian Vermeule, a professor of constitutional law at Harvard and noted critic of the originalist judicial philosophy with which Barrett has been associated, told me that he is almost frightened of her. "I lectured on my last book at Notre Dame and she asked the absolute sharpest, most penetrating questions. She is scary smart." The legal profession at large agrees; a majority of the American Bar Association's standing committee on judicial nominations rated her "well qualified" last year. There is absolutely no question of her pedigree.

Which is why we need not dwell on the implications of her so-far hypothetical nomination, however much grief it might bring to one's political opponents. If anything it is almost boorish. Barrett should be nominated by the president and confirmed for the very simple reason that she is a gifted legal mind respected by her colleagues and a person of outstanding character whose presence on our country's highest court would do credit to the United States and her people.

 

[fortsbest]

What about his Trump University scam?

What about HIS Trump Foundation corruption?

Not to mention that if you don't think he's involved with money laundering, you truly are blinded by your Dear Leader's star.

Yup, Trump university was a bad venture. Students didn't get what they were promised.

Trump foundation? Who knows yet, but considering who brought the charges and his own criminal problems, that all smacks of politics way more than actual criminal dealings. Your last statement is based on your wish just like Russian collusion. Not fact. And as I stated, even so these things went on while he was a private citizen. He did not amass his fortune while he was in office in one form or another. Isn't it amazing how many of these politicians (on both sides by the way) leave office far wealthier than when they got there? ON salaries that are what $175000 per year? One reason I absolutely agree with you on term limits.

 

[bbgun]

They're both awful, sleazy people who should never be President. Pointless to argue who's worse.

 

[L.T. Fan]

They're both awful, sleazy people who should never be President. Pointless to argue who's worse.

Yeah when has there been anyone holding the Presidential office that resembled a stalwart and shining knight ? Its a silly argument to even tread on that ground. Presidents are judged on what they accomplished while in office. Historical buffs will furnish the rest of the details.

 

[BipolarFuk]

Fall of the American Empire

Fall of the American Empire

The U.S. government is, as a matter of policy, literally ripping children from the arms of their parents and putting them in fenced enclosures (which officials insist aren’t cages, oh no). The U.S. president is demanding that law enforcement stop investigating his associates and go after his political enemies instead. He has been insulting democratic allies while praising murderous dictators. And a global trade war seems increasingly likely.

What do these stories have in common? Obviously they’re all tied to the character of the man occupying the White House, surely the worst human being ever to hold his position. But there’s also a larger context, and it’s not just about Donald Trump. What we’re witnessing is a systematic rejection of longstanding American values — the values that actually made America great.

America has long been a powerful nation. In particular, we emerged from World War II with a level of both economic and military dominance not seen since the heyday of ancient Rome. But our role in the world was always about more than money and guns. It was also about ideals: America stood for something larger than itself — for freedom, human rights and the rule of law as universal principles.

Of course, we often fell short of those ideals. But the ideals were real, and mattered. Many nations have pursued racist policies; but when the Swedish economist Gunnar Myrdal wrote his 1944 book about our “Negro problem,” he called it “An American Dilemma,” because he viewed us as a nation whose civilization had a “flavor of enlightenment” and whose citizens were aware at some level that our treatment of blacks was at odds with our principles.

And his belief that there was a core of decency — maybe even goodness — to America was eventually vindicated by the rise and success, incomplete as it was, of the civil rights movement.

But what does American goodness — all too often honored in the breach, but still real — have to do with American power, let alone world trade? The answer is that for 70 years, American goodness and American greatness went hand in hand. Our ideals, and the fact that other countries knew we held those ideals, made us a different kind of great power, one that inspired trust.

Think about it. By the end of World War II, we and our British allies had in effect conquered a large part of the world. We could have become permanent occupiers, and/or installed subservient puppet governments, the way the Soviet Union did in Eastern Europe. And yes, we did do that in some developing countries; our history with, say, Iran is not at all pretty.

But what we mainly did instead was help defeated enemies get back on their feet, establishing democratic regimes that shared our core values and became allies in protecting those values.

The Pax Americana was a sort of empire; certainly America was for a long time very much first among equals. But it was by historical standards a remarkably benign empire, held together by soft power and respect rather than force. (There are actually some parallels with the ancient Pax Romana, but that’s another story.)

And while you might be tempted to view international trade deals, which Trump says have turned us into a “piggy bank that everyone else is robbing,” as a completely separate story, they are anything but. Trade agreements were meant to (and did) make America richer, but they were also, from the beginning, about more than dollars and cents.

In fact, the modern world trading system was largely the brainchild not of economists or business interests, but of Cordell Hull, F.D.R.’s long-serving secretary of state, who believed that “prosperous trade among nations” was an essential element in building an “enduring peace.” So you want to think of the postwar creation of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade as part of the same strategy that more or less simultaneously gave rise to the Marshall Plan and the creation of NATO.

So all the things happening now are of a piece. Committing atrocities at the border, attacking the domestic rule of law, insulting democratic leaders while praising thugs, and breaking up trade agreements are all about ending American exceptionalism, turning our back on the ideals that made us different from other powerful nations.

And rejecting our ideals won’t make us stronger; it will make us weaker. We were the leader of the free world, a moral as well as financial and military force. But we’re throwing all that away.

What’s more, it won’t even serve our self-interest. America isn’t nearly as dominant a power as it was 70 years ago; Trump is delusional if he thinks that other countries will back down in the face of his threats. And if we are heading for a full-blown trade war, which seems increasingly likely, both he and those who voted for him will be shocked at how it goes: Some industries will gain, but millions of workers will be displaced.

So Trump isn’t making America great again; he’s trashing the things that made us great, turning us into just another bully — one whose bullying will be far less effective than he imagines.






















































~Waits on attacks on author~

 

[jsmith6919]

The U.S. government is, as a matter of policy, literally ripping children from the arms of their parents and putting them in fenced enclosures (which officials insist aren’t cages, oh no). The U.S. president is demanding that law enforcement stop investigating his associates and go after his political enemies instead. He has been insulting democratic allies while praising murderous dictators. And a global trade war seems increasingly likely.

What do these stories have in common? Obviously they’re all tied to the character of the man occupying the White House, surely the worst human being ever to hold his position. But there’s also a larger context, and it’s not just about Donald Trump. What we’re witnessing is a systematic rejection of longstanding American values — the values that actually made America great.

America has long been a powerful nation. In particular, we emerged from World War II with a level of both economic and military dominance not seen since the heyday of ancient Rome. But our role in the world was always about more than money and guns. It was also about ideals: America stood for something larger than itself — for freedom, human rights and the rule of law as universal principles.

Of course, we often fell short of those ideals. But the ideals were real, and mattered. Many nations have pursued racist policies; but when the Swedish economist Gunnar Myrdal wrote his 1944 book about our “Negro problem,” he called it “An American Dilemma,” because he viewed us as a nation whose civilization had a “flavor of enlightenment” and whose citizens were aware at some level that our treatment of blacks was at odds with our principles.

And his belief that there was a core of decency — maybe even goodness — to America was eventually vindicated by the rise and success, incomplete as it was, of the civil rights movement.

But what does American goodness — all too often honored in the breach, but still real — have to do with American power, let alone world trade? The answer is that for 70 years, American goodness and American greatness went hand in hand. Our ideals, and the fact that other countries knew we held those ideals, made us a different kind of great power, one that inspired trust.

Think about it. By the end of World War II, we and our British allies had in effect conquered a large part of the world. We could have become permanent occupiers, and/or installed subservient puppet governments, the way the Soviet Union did in Eastern Europe. And yes, we did do that in some developing countries; our history with, say, Iran is not at all pretty.

But what we mainly did instead was help defeated enemies get back on their feet, establishing democratic regimes that shared our core values and became allies in protecting those values.

The Pax Americana was a sort of empire; certainly America was for a long time very much first among equals. But it was by historical standards a remarkably benign empire, held together by soft power and respect rather than force. (There are actually some parallels with the ancient Pax Romana, but that’s another story.)

And while you might be tempted to view international trade deals, which Trump says have turned us into a “piggy bank that everyone else is robbing,” as a completely separate story, they are anything but. Trade agreements were meant to (and did) make America richer, but they were also, from the beginning, about more than dollars and cents.

In fact, the modern world trading system was largely the brainchild not of economists or business interests, but of Cordell Hull, F.D.R.’s long-serving secretary of state, who believed that “prosperous trade among nations” was an essential element in building an “enduring peace.” So you want to think of the postwar creation of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade as part of the same strategy that more or less simultaneously gave rise to the Marshall Plan and the creation of NATO.

So all the things happening now are of a piece. Committing atrocities at the border, attacking the domestic rule of law, insulting democratic leaders while praising thugs, and breaking up trade agreements are all about ending American exceptionalism, turning our back on the ideals that made us different from other powerful nations.

And rejecting our ideals won’t make us stronger; it will make us weaker. We were the leader of the free world, a moral as well as financial and military force. But we’re throwing all that away.

What’s more, it won’t even serve our self-interest. America isn’t nearly as dominant a power as it was 70 years ago; Trump is delusional if he thinks that other countries will back down in the face of his threats. And if we are heading for a full-blown trade war, which seems increasingly likely, both he and those who voted for him will be shocked at how it goes: Some industries will gain, but millions of workers will be displaced.

So Trump isn’t making America great again; he’s trashing the things that made us great, turning us into just another bully — one whose bullying will be far less effective than he imagines.






















































~Waits on attacks on author~

 

[L.T. Fan]

The U.S. government is, as a matter of policy, literally ripping children from the arms of their parents and putting them in fenced enclosures (which officials insist aren’t cages, oh no). The U.S. president is demanding that law enforcement stop investigating his associates and go after his political enemies instead. He has been insulting democratic allies while praising murderous dictators. And a global trade war seems increasingly likely.

What do these stories have in common? Obviously they’re all tied to the character of the man occupying the White House, surely the worst human being ever to hold his position. But there’s also a larger context, and it’s not just about Donald Trump. What we’re witnessing is a systematic rejection of longstanding American values — the values that actually made America great.

America has long been a powerful nation. In particular, we emerged from World War II with a level of both economic and military dominance not seen since the heyday of ancient Rome. But our role in the world was always about more than money and guns. It was also about ideals: America stood for something larger than itself — for freedom, human rights and the rule of law as universal principles.

Of course, we often fell short of those ideals. But the ideals were real, and mattered. Many nations have pursued racist policies; but when the Swedish economist Gunnar Myrdal wrote his 1944 book about our “Negro problem,” he called it “An American Dilemma,” because he viewed us as a nation whose civilization had a “flavor of enlightenment” and whose citizens were aware at some level that our treatment of blacks was at odds with our principles.

And his belief that there was a core of decency — maybe even goodness — to America was eventually vindicated by the rise and success, incomplete as it was, of the civil rights movement.

But what does American goodness — all too often honored in the breach, but still real — have to do with American power, let alone world trade? The answer is that for 70 years, American goodness and American greatness went hand in hand. Our ideals, and the fact that other countries knew we held those ideals, made us a different kind of great power, one that inspired trust.

Think about it. By the end of World War II, we and our British allies had in effect conquered a large part of the world. We could have become permanent occupiers, and/or installed subservient puppet governments, the way the Soviet Union did in Eastern Europe. And yes, we did do that in some developing countries; our history with, say, Iran is not at all pretty.

But what we mainly did instead was help defeated enemies get back on their feet, establishing democratic regimes that shared our core values and became allies in protecting those values.

The Pax Americana was a sort of empire; certainly America was for a long time very much first among equals. But it was by historical standards a remarkably benign empire, held together by soft power and respect rather than force. (There are actually some parallels with the ancient Pax Romana, but that’s another story.)

And while you might be tempted to view international trade deals, which Trump says have turned us into a “piggy bank that everyone else is robbing,” as a completely separate story, they are anything but. Trade agreements were meant to (and did) make America richer, but they were also, from the beginning, about more than dollars and cents.

In fact, the modern world trading system was largely the brainchild not of economists or business interests, but of Cordell Hull, F.D.R.’s long-serving secretary of state, who believed that “prosperous trade among nations” was an essential element in building an “enduring peace.” So you want to think of the postwar creation of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade as part of the same strategy that more or less simultaneously gave rise to the Marshall Plan and the creation of NATO.

So all the things happening now are of a piece. Committing atrocities at the border, attacking the domestic rule of law, insulting democratic leaders while praising thugs, and breaking up trade agreements are all about ending American exceptionalism, turning our back on the ideals that made us different from other powerful nations.

And rejecting our ideals won’t make us stronger; it will make us weaker. We were the leader of the free world, a moral as well as financial and military force. But we’re throwing all that away.

What’s more, it won’t even serve our self-interest. America isn’t nearly as dominant a power as it was 70 years ago; Trump is delusional if he thinks that other countries will back down in the face of his threats. And if we are heading for a full-blown trade war, which seems increasingly likely, both he and those who voted for him will be shocked at how it goes: Some industries will gain, but millions of workers will be displaced.

So Trump isn’t making America great again; he’s trashing the things that made us great, turning us into just another bully — one whose bullying will be far less effective than he imagines.

You might want to check on the attitude of some of the prominent Democrats back when Gerald Ford asked some Governors to House a few refugees. One very notable one was the Same Governor Jerry Brown who now not only wants to blow up the borders but Not only said said no to the request but Hello no. This immigration crap you are spreading around is just political fodder which is meaningless and the halos and pitchforks you are spreading around just shows how little you really know about the political history of this country. You are just eaten up with sour grapes and can’t get past having to deal with someone that doesn’t make you warm and fuzzy. Keep piling up these meaningless articles for the recycle trash truck when they come by.

 

[BipolarFuk]

Senate panel agrees with intel community that Putin was trying to help Trump

Senate panel agrees with intel community that Putin was trying to help Trump

Breaking with their House Republican counterparts, the Senate Intelligence Committee said Tuesday that the intelligence community properly concluded in January of last year that Russian President Vladimir Putin was trying to help Donald Trump when Moscow meddled in the 2016 election.

The Senate panel released a summary Tuesday of its examination of the intelligence community's January 2017 assessment, which laid out the case of Russia's election meddling and concluded that Putin was trying to help Trump win.

The Senate report said that the intelligence community's assessment of Russia's intentions were sound, which is at odds with the House Intelligence Committee Republicans' report that found "significant intelligence tradecraft failings" in the assessment of Putin's objectives.

"The Committee has spent the last 16 months reviewing the sources, tradecraft and analytic work underpinning the Intelligence Community Assessment and sees no reason to dispute the conclusions," Senate Intelligence Chairman Richard Burr said in a statement, reiterating what he had initially said in May.

The unclassified summary released on Tuesday provides details on why the Senate Intelligence Committee agreed with the intelligence community that Russia was trying to help Trump and hurt Hillary Clinton's campaign.

The conclusion has been affirmed by Trump's entire national security team, but the President himself has repeatedly refused to state that Russia was meddling to help him.

"Russia continues to say they had nothing to do with Meddling in our Election!" Trump tweeted last week.

Trump's assertion was given a boost in March by the House Intelligence Committee Republicans, who also stated in their report that they had no evidence of collusion between members of Trump's team and Russian officials.

The House committee wrote that it "identified significant intelligence tradecraft failings that undermine confidence in the ICA (Intelligence Community Assessment) judgments regarding Russian President Vladimir Putin's strategic objectives for disrupting the U.S. election."

Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee charged that the Republican investigation was intended to help protect Trump, not uncover collusion, and they have questioned the Republicans' findings about the intelligence community report.
The Senate Intelligence Committee reached a different conclusion that has bipartisan support, which found that the assessment was "a sound intelligence product."

The committee said that the intelligence community assessment relied on public Russian leadership commentary, Russian state media reports, public examples where Russian interests aligned with US candidate policy statements, and "a body of intelligence reporting to support the assessment that Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for Trump."

The Senate summary noted there were different confidence levels between the National Security Agency and the CIA and FBI about whether Putin and the Russian government were aspiring to help Trump; the CIA and FBI assessed with "high confidence" and the NSA with "moderate confidence." But the committee wrote that its examination found that "the analytical disagreement was reasonable, transparent, and openly debated among the agencies and analysts, with analysts, managers, and agency heads on both sides of the confidence level articulately justifying their positions."

"In all the interviews of those who drafted and prepared the ICA, the committee heard consistently that analysts were under no politically motivated pressure to reach any conclusions," the committee wrote. "All analysts expressed that they were free to debate, object to content, and assess confidence levels, as is normal and proper for the analytic process."

 

[L.T. Fan]

I think the Russians were trying to help Trump also. Now the question is however, was Trump colluding with the Russians? That has always been the question and until the various parties involved in investigating this issue produce evidence supporting this the conclusion reached by the Senate Panel is of no consequence.

 

[BipolarFuk]

Dubious Fox News article appears to have sparked Trump attack on Obama

Dubious Fox News article appears to have sparked Trump attack on Obama

President Donald Trump appeared to rely on a dubious Fox News report Tuesday morning to unleash an attack on his predecessor, accusing President Barack Obama, without any real evidence, of granting citizenship to 2,500 Iranians as part of nuclear deal negotiations.

"Just out that Obama Administration granted citizenship, during the terrible Iran Deal negotiation, to 2,500 Iranians - including to government officials," Trump tweeted. "How big (and bad) is that?"

Jeff Prescott, the former senior director on Obama's National Security Council, called Trump's allegation "absurd and entirely false."

Prescott shared with CNN immigration data from the Department of Homeland Security which showed that the number of Iranians naturalized in the United States over the course of the Obama and Bush administrations was relatively consistent.

"There was no connection between the Iran nuclear deal and immigration policy," Prescott added.

The unsubstantiated claim first gained attention with a Monday story on Fox News' website that relied on the word of an Iranian cleric who is also a member of the country's parliament.

The article, written by Chris Irvine, a Fox News senior editor, cited an Iranian news agency that cited an Iranian newspaper that quoted the single Iranian cleric, who said the Obama administration provided citizenship to 2,500 unidentified Iranians during nuclear deal negotiations.

The article itself quoted, toward the end of the story, the network's own commentator, former Obama State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf, saying, "This sounds like totally made up BS." The story said the Department of Homeland Security and State Department declined to comment, and that a representative for former Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson could not be reached.

Prior to the Fox News article, the claim had not received any noticeable attention from the US media.

But after Fox News published its story, other outlets, primarily in the conservative media space, published similar stories. Those outlets included The Daily Mail, The Gateway Pundit, and TownHall.

The claims were also shared on Twitter by Fox News host Sean Hannity and frequent Fox guests David Clarke and Charlie Kirk.

On Tuesday morning, just hours before Trump's tweet, the story made its way to Fox News' airwaves on "Fox & Friends First," the network's early morning show. It also later aired on "America's Newsroom," a late-morning news program on Fox News.

"It shouldn't be lost on anyone that this is a case of Donald Trump parroting Fox News, which is peddling the claims of an Iranian hardliner," Prescott told CNN.

Jake Sullivan, a former Obama official who was involved at the start of the Iran nuclear negotiations, also skewered Trump for relying on Fox News' thin report to make what he called a "completely false" claim.

"What is interesting about this is that what happened is a hardline crank in Iran just randomly made this comment, Fox News writes a story on it, and then Trump tweets it," Sullivan said on "The Situation Room."

"He had every opportunity to call people in his own Department of Homeland Security and State Department to ask whether or not this was true. And they would have told him it wasn't," Sullivan added. "Instead, he relies on Fox News. And the scary thing is that he's increasingly relying on sources like Fox News to get his intelligence rather than the professionals in his own government."

Neither a spokesperson for Fox News nor the White House responded to a request for comment Tuesday afternoon.

This would not be the first time Trump has tweeted false or questionable claims that have originated in right-wing media. The President has a long history of stoking conspiracy theories that target his political rivals.

 

[L.T. Fan]

President Donald Trump appeared to rely on a dubious Fox News report Tuesday morning to unleash an attack on his predecessor, accusing President Barack Obama, without any real evidence, of granting citizenship to 2,500 Iranians as part of nuclear deal negotiations.

"Just out that Obama Administration granted citizenship, during the terrible Iran Deal negotiation, to 2,500 Iranians - including to government officials," Trump tweeted. "How big (and bad) is that?"

Jeff Prescott, the former senior director on Obama's National Security Council, called Trump's allegation "absurd and entirely false."

Prescott shared with CNN immigration data from the Department of Homeland Security which showed that the number of Iranians naturalized in the United States over the course of the Obama and Bush administrations was relatively consistent.

"There was no connection between the Iran nuclear deal and immigration policy," Prescott added.

The unsubstantiated claim first gained attention with a Monday story on Fox News' website that relied on the word of an Iranian cleric who is also a member of the country's parliament.

The article, written by Chris Irvine, a Fox News senior editor, cited an Iranian news agency that cited an Iranian newspaper that quoted the single Iranian cleric, who said the Obama administration provided citizenship to 2,500 unidentified Iranians during nuclear deal negotiations.

The article itself quoted, toward the end of the story, the network's own commentator, former Obama State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf, saying, "This sounds like totally made up BS." The story said the Department of Homeland Security and State Department declined to comment, and that a representative for former Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson could not be reached.

Prior to the Fox News article, the claim had not received any noticeable attention from the US media.

But after Fox News published its story, other outlets, primarily in the conservative media space, published similar stories. Those outlets included The Daily Mail, The Gateway Pundit, and TownHall.

The claims were also shared on Twitter by Fox News host Sean Hannity and frequent Fox guests David Clarke and Charlie Kirk.

On Tuesday morning, just hours before Trump's tweet, the story made its way to Fox News' airwaves on "Fox & Friends First," the network's early morning show. It also later aired on "America's Newsroom," a late-morning news program on Fox News.

"It shouldn't be lost on anyone that this is a case of Donald Trump parroting Fox News, which is peddling the claims of an Iranian hardliner," Prescott told CNN.

Jake Sullivan, a former Obama official who was involved at the start of the Iran nuclear negotiations, also skewered Trump for relying on Fox News' thin report to make what he called a "completely false" claim.

"What is interesting about this is that what happened is a hardline crank in Iran just randomly made this comment, Fox News writes a story on it, and then Trump tweets it," Sullivan said on "The Situation Room."

"He had every opportunity to call people in his own Department of Homeland Security and State Department to ask whether or not this was true. And they would have told him it wasn't," Sullivan added. "Instead, he relies on Fox News. And the scary thing is that he's increasingly relying on sources like Fox News to get his intelligence rather than the professionals in his own government."

Neither a spokesperson for Fox News nor the White House responded to a request for comment Tuesday afternoon.

This would not be the first time Trump has tweeted false or questionable claims that have originated in right-wing media. The President has a long history of stoking conspiracy theories that target his political rivals.

You should be proud. If true this action is part of your normal information flow. We are bombarded with unconfirmed stories by you all the time. Never knew you and Trump have similar thought processes.

 

[boozeman]

Yeah, this is totally normal.

 

[BipolarFuk]

Yeah, this is totally normal.

And guaran-damn-teed they would line up behind their Dear Leader to support the invasion because, uh, uh, MURCA MOTHERFUCKERS!!!

 

[BipolarFuk]

The Times finally gets to the bottom of Trump supporters: It turns out they're garbage human beings

The Times finally gets to the bottom of Trump supporters: It turns out they're garbage human beings

In the New York Times' quest to get to the bottom of what makes every last Trump supporter in America tick, we have been treated to endless interviews, loving tributes to downtrodden towns in which nary a non-white person is ever seen, and one particular day when the op-ed pages were turned over to Trump supporters to argue for Trump's genius directly. But this is still not enough, and so Sunday's paper included a zoological analysis from a journalist who grew up among them.

It is meant to be flattering, or at least neutral, but the short version is that the people who have been bleating about "family values" for the last half-century do not actually give a flying damn about family values and never did. It was all garbage from the get-go. While people from "college" or "in New York" or "religiously conservative" or "liberal" or take-your pick all had harsh words for the crooked, lying, adulterous, misogynist trash-heap of a human being, the salt-of-the-earth Trump supporters back in Nebraska could not possibly care less about the bullshit-laden values attributed to them in fawning tributes to the heartland's common clay.

To hell with it all: Go team adulter-crook!

In contrast, almost all of the people I know in my hometown in Nebraska proudly supported him. They glossed over his infidelities and stressed that he seemed to be a good father. They were impressed by his “respectful” sons and admired the success of his daughters.

“Glossed over” is a fine phrase. “Good father” is quite the phrase itself. And this new notion of “respectful,” which apparently consists of “glossing over” his sons’ histories of charity fraud, public attacks on black politicians, and that whole ‘met Russian agents in Trump Tower’ thing, is doing quite the heavy lift.

Reading between the lines, what we have here is a group of people who practice what is known in the rest of the world as aggressive ignorance. You can’t say that Trump’s behavior bothers you if you drive wooden stakes into both ears and swear you didn’t hear about any of it.

The author goes through some trouble and many paragraphs to explain this phenomenon of Trump support despite Trump’s grotesque family-values-averse behaviors via a mix of sociology and class, because we are not allowed to point out that these people are simply dishonest bullshitters. When you grow up in Nebraska, you are apparently expected to bleat about family values and the corruption of the elites, to be sure—but, socioeconomically speaking, it is apparently all a ruse meant for the children and whatever gullible reporters wander through town. In reality, when it comes to the churches and the voting booths, you can be as adulterous as you want, cheat your neighbor eagerly and gleefully, lie to everyone about everything and—if you are in the right tribe, and only if you are in the right tribe—it is expected.

We're not supposed to say it, but that is what the sociological modal boils down to. I think all of us have ample experience with these sorts of human beings, and it is not necessarily political. I believe I have pointed out multiple times that in my own experiences, for example, if any business owner mentions Jesus within the first 10 minutes of meeting you you can be absolutely, 100 percent assured they are out to scam you, good and hard, which is an interesting metric of what so-called Christianity has been reduced to in many subsets of the American psyche. But in general, journalists and other neutral observers are not supposed to notice that wide swaths of society are, in fact, Not Good People. Even if there are entire churches or towns filled with them.

And so we instead get it explained to us in very neutral, analytical terms. Can't very well take to the pages of the New York Times to explain that Trump voters are wife-beating fascists who admire Trump's ability to build a golden tower for himself by cheating other people out of their money, but even in its most anodyne formulation the message is clear: Trump's version of "family values" plays well to people who themselves have none.

Baffling as it may be to elites, Mr. Trump embodies a real if imperfect model of family values. People familiar with the purple family model tend to view his alienation from his children’s mother as normal and his closeness to his children as exceptional and admirable. I saw this among my acquaintances in Nebraska. Even those from red families were more likely than my acquaintances in New York to know someone who has had a child out of wedlock or is subject to a restraining order.

See there? By God, being a do-nothing father with no apparent love for his kids is the downright admirable way to raise a family. And who, among Trump's base, has not had a restraining order slapped on them at some point in their lives? Oopsies have been made.

The only way Trump could connect with these fine upstanding voters any deeper than he has, I tell you, is to start a meth lab in his basement.

Yes, yes, this is all very rude—but strip the roundabout talk of religious denominations and average family incomes and the rest of the ancillary smoke tossed into the piece and you are left with the blunt notion that Trump's supporters absolutely Do Not Care about his adultery, his misogyny, his lies, his crookedness, his racism, or the possibility that he committed treason against his nation in order to sit at the desk he now sits at. That is what they, themselves, will eagerly tell you.

And from a moral point of view, rather than a socioeconomic one, there's no "but economic status" or "but particular sub-denomination of Jesus" that justifies that.

Plainly put: These are the hallmarks of terrible human beings. People who you would not trust with your children. People you would go out of your way to avoid, if you did care about honesty or family values. These are the people who press their mistresses for abortions but who also are not vexed by abortion-providing doctors being murdered in their Kansas churches; they are confederate flag-wavers in Union states, miffed that new civil rights laws a half century ago slighted their own ne’er-do-well families in some never-quite-describable way; these are people who are so obsessed with the thought that someone better is looking down on them that they are willing to punch whatever kittens need punching in order to prove they're at least better at kitten-punching than the rest of you. The opioid epidemic is centered in Trump-supporting counties. The demand that brown-looking children be placed in detention camps for fear that a terrified 8-year-old might be a hardened gang leader is a phenomenon of Trump-Supporting counties. The insistence that Treason Might Be Good Now is peddled by Fox News celebrities to die-hard Trump supporters who will repeat and retweet it willing and eagerly; it was Trump supporters, Jesus-punchers every one, who gave Alabama crapsack Roy Moore their votes even after his exposure as a child molester—complete with Bible citations from “conservative” pastors arguing that Roy Moore trolling the malls for a child bride was, in fact, in fine Old Testament tradition.

There is an obsessive need, in our journalistic culture, to explain bad behavior away. Donald Trump is not an amoral cesspool of lies, he is merely engaging in a particular brand of political rhetoric that seeks to persuade via the creative denial of the world everyone else can see with their own two eyes—and it's not for we keepers of the truth to judge. Donald Trump's supporters are not themselves dismal human beings who have open contempt for anyone not in their own small tribe, people who are forever obsessed with harming every other tribe in every other way, regardless of how it is done or how many family values rules need to be broken to do it, but are waving their little rebel flags and demanding child internment camps because their economic anxiety has gotten their stomachs all a-knotted of late.

But the acts speak for themselves. Trump's supporters do not care about his values, his lies, the means by which he achieves his ends, or whether or not he burns the Constitution in a barbecue pit so long as he can make them feel better about their own lot in life. This is not our construction, but their own; you need not look very far in any interview to find it. They are not good people. They are not good Americans, and their so-called morals are reptilian at best. We are allowed to say it.

You want to find good people, look for the people who are just as poor but care for others anyway, or who are under just as much economic stress but do not use it as excuse for cheating and stealing their way through it—or offering up eager praise for those that do. Good people don't claim to have family values and then discard those values at the drop of a hat when a rich, shouting hatebag they saw on their television set tells them to ignore all that. Good people don't soak themselves in transparent lies about immigrants or minorities, then declare everyone else to be “elites” arrayed against them in “elite”-minded conspiracy when some newspaper, somewhere, points out that those things were, in fact, cheap and tawdry lies.

The more we hear from Trump defenders, the more transparent it is that they are indeed, well, bad. It's terribly rude to say, and the press cannot say it, but the rest of us can. If you still support Trump at this late date, you are a terrible human being. You should, in fact, feel bad about yourself.

Yes, the rest of us do indeed look down on these people. Those of us with actual family values do; those of us who care about honesty in government do; those of us who are not furious bulging-eyed racists do; those of us who believe thousands of years of scientific discoveries are worth more than the dribbling pronouncements of a street-corner charlatan do; those of us with actual religious convictions do; those of us who are actual patriots do.

And we're not sorry. Get your act together, you losers. You voted for a two-bit conman you saw on a television show, and you did it because you either didn't care, didn’t pay attention, or because you wanted to be conned good and hard. But that was then, this is now, and you are allowed to change your mind and remember all the things you supposedly believed in before this glowing orange lunatic arrived on the scene to Make Sleaze Great Again.

You want to be respected, then do something worthy of respect. It’s as simple as that.

 

[L.T. Fan]

No wonder you are so gullible.

 

[boozeman]

And we're not sorry. Get your act together, you losers. You voted for a two-bit conman you saw on a television show, and you did it because you either didn't care, didn’t pay attention, or because you wanted to be conned good and hard. But that was then, this is now, and you are allowed to change your mind and remember all the things you supposedly believed in before this glowing orange lunatic arrived on the scene to Make Sleaze Great Again.

Asinine.

I don't like Trump a bit but to paint with a broad brush like this is retarded.

A lot of people voted for him for the simple reason they thought Clinton was just as much of a grifter. The idea that she is any less of a con artist or crook is just idiotic.

 

[bbgun]

A lot of those "garbage human beings" voted for Obama. I guess they were angels then.

 

[skidadl]

Hillary doesn’t resonate with the average Midwesterner, factory worker and so forth. The dems should look in the mirror. They screwed the pooch big time. If I was a lefty I would be yelling that message from the mountaintops. But noooooo they want to yell at trump.

 

[boozeman]

Hillary doesn’t resonate with the average Midwesterner, factory worker and so forth. The dems should look in the mirror. They screwed the pooch big time. If I was a lefty I would be yelling that message from the mountaintops. But noooooo they want to yell at trump.

The average Midwestern shitkicker isn't going to identify with practically anyone the democrats can march up there.

It wasn't Hillary. And it wouldn't have been Bernie Sanders either.

This election made a difference because the rural voter was turned off. In the previous two elections, I think they were just kind of apathetic due to candidates who quite honestly lacked charisma.

While I think there will be a huge backlash towards Trump in the next election, I can't see any democrat that could have enough sway to turn things significantly.

 

[boozeman]

A lot of those "garbage human beings" voted for Obama. I guess they were angels then.

I don't buy that for a second. I doubt many people who were motivated to get off their ass and vote Obama would turn right back around four years later and vote Trump.