Trump, June 2017: From [Covfefe] with Love

shakey 1) is there a california politics thread? 2) is this fair https://theintercept.com/2017/06/30/california-single-payer-organizers-are-deceiving-their-supporters-its-time-to-stop/

STEELE!!!

“5 states that have declined to provide Kobach with their files make up nearly a quarter of all of the active voters in the United States” https://t.co/S373cV7Sxg

— Bradd Jaffy (@BraddJaffy) June 30, 2017

because the intelligence comes from another country

Schindler in particular has been beating this drum for a while.

The tone is histrionic but the core point re: Prop 98 is correct - funding is the huge issue and a ballot initiative would be required to make it work. The cynical assesaments of various factions' motivations, however, are not particularly relevant.

Xp

i cant stop thinking about kush's voice after hearing it last week

― marcos, Friday, June 30, 2017 4:36 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I intentionally avoided it and hope to never hear it. I just want to live in this world of mystery.

Meanwhile, worth noting, esp. since some of these are notably red states.

So far CA, KY, VA, MA, NC, MN, UT, OK, NY, TN & NM say they won't hand over sensitive voter data to Kris Kobach

— Ari Berman (@AriBerman) June 30, 2017

I refuse to hear Kush as anything other than Gilbert Godfrey.

Alexandra Petri, excellent as always.

I stand with my colleagues in Congress to say: The president’s tweet is beneath the dignity of the office.

This is not making America great.

The president has at last done the unthinkable: He has insulted a morning television personality in crude and ghastly terms
and I must — in consequence of this hideous and vile breach of the dignity of the office — withdraw none of my support from his legislative agenda. (If you can call it a legislative agenda and not a ragtag collection of bad ideas quickly stapled together with a dead pigeon in the middle.)

...

Everything else the president has done is fine — the continued attacks on the media’s legitimacy, the carelessness toward history and diplomacy, the harmful rhetoric about Muslims, the — well, it is all fine. This is too much, though, and I am putting my foot down, here, on my way to vote against icebergs.

...

By God, this is not what George Washington would have wanted, and I am thus withdrawing my support for everything but the legislation Trump would like us to pass. His words are a shame, but it is too important that we end health insurance for indigent seniors in Ohio.

hot lead for anyone looking for work

http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/29/politics/mike-pence-chief-of-staff-replacement/index.html

Okay, roffle indeed. They REALLY don't like Pence back at home.

Indiana's Secretary of State saying no to Pence-Kobach information request https://t.co/zIRMtWTX4H

— Trip Gabriel (@tripgabriel) June 30, 2017

I think secretaries of state in general are pissed off/offended by this bullshit because it calls them out as incompetent.

Weirdly specific tin hat tweets going around right now hinting that WaPo has proof (including audio) of Russia collusion, but that IC asked them to hold or spike it because the intelligence comes from another country. Who knows, right? But that would make Rosenstein's non sequitur press release about trusting foreign sources make some sense, and might also explain the weird "collusion isn't illegal" pre-emptive argument. Some thoughts on it here:

Am I misremembering or was the gist of the Washington Post story last week not that the intel taken to Obama was sourced from another country and that the CIA believed it was legit but the NSA had doubts (at least at the time), which contributed to Obama not going harder on it?

Indeed.

WH Dep Press Sec Sanders on states not turning over their data to Trump's election commission: "I think that’s mostly a political stunt.”

— S.V. Dáte (@svdate) June 30, 2017

Ohio joins the "get stuffed" crowd: https://www.clevescene.com/scene-and-heard/archives/2017/06/30/ohio-says-it-wont-provide-confidential-voter-information-requested-by-trump-commission

fuck this idiot

Ho. Le. Cow. What a blunder. Kobach can't provide the information he himself requested in the letter. Oh my oh my. https://t.co/JXuKm2F9QP

— Rick Hasen (@rickhasen) June 30, 2017

If Republican Senators are unable to pass what they are working on now, they should immediately REPEAL, and then REPLACE at a later date!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 30, 2017

5th dimension!

how about you release your tax returns first?

If you can't fix it now, just smash it in the street and we'll fix it later! Or something!

Amazing. This is the DC bureau chief of the NY Post

A source tells me Trump ran around the West Wing yesterday asking staff what they thought of his tweet & admitting it wasn't presidential

— Gabby Morrongiello (@gabriellahope_) June 30, 2017

Per source, Trump walked up to staffers saying: "I know it wasn't presidential, but what did you think?" https://t.co/e7EcFVyUcV

— Gabby Morrongiello (@gabriellahope_) June 30, 2017

Also deep LOL at Kobach's idiocy there.

What would even happen if they repealed without replacing? The bill is a series of industry reforms that have gotten woven into every aspect of US healthcare.

any reports of what the west wingers said in response?

I'm sure the repeal-without-replace process would go very smooth, the smoothest

let's run government like a business, guys

"Sick burn, Mr. President."

^

if you're not failing you're not doing disruption enough to, disrupt.. and.. *burrp*

I know it wasn't presidential, but what did you think?

trump thoughtfully trying to offer us something better than "covfefe" for a july thread title. not saying we should take the bait necessarily, but still.

hahaha

that is pretty good as a thread title, I admit

Hey we might as well.

it's perfect

'I know it makes me look like an unhinged scrote who should probably be locked in a tiny cage for the good of humanity, but what did you think?'

I think you answered your own question, dipshit.

Okay, amazing. AMAZING.

I didn't think this quote was real — until I found it's actually on the website of the Republican Secretary of State of Mississippi pic.twitter.com/ExpRdWhMCi

— Bradd Jaffy (@BraddJaffy) June 30, 2017

bad ass

Mississippi Burn

Also this

22 states now won't hand over voter info to Kobach: CA, CT, IN, KY, MA, MN, NC, NM, ND, NV, NY, OH, OK, PA, RI, SD, TN, UT, VA, VT, WA, WI

— Ari Berman (@AriBerman) June 30, 2017

Adding up so quick that MS isn't on there yet, even.

In fact the only state which I think has said 'Sure!' is New Hampshire, which, LOL.

Sadly, NJ hasn't said no yet. Fortunately, I'm a registered Republican (it seemed funny when I was 18) so I probably won't get purged.

Looks like New Hampshire said "you can have the information that's already public but not all that other stuff you asked for" which is what a lot of these states are saying

Yeah, it's a useful cover. Regardless, I'll take that.

Oregon automatically adds people to voting rolls when they do basically any civic process, like basically if you look at a DMV you are registered to vote, so there's got to be some legal consent issues there?

kolbach should just download that huge RNC leak from a few weeks ago

Haha yes of course

Scott Walker's Advice to President Trump: 'Tweet More'https://t.co/pLoR1d0rTv

— Fox News (@FoxNews) June 30, 2017

Moving to Maryland in late September. :)

Damn, that Hoseman statement makes me not quite as ashamed to live in Mississippi as I usually am.

Hm hm hm

https://www.wsj.com/articles/gop-activist-who-sought-clinton-emails-cited-trump-campaign-officials-1498872923

A longtime Republican activist who led an operation hoping to obtain Hillary Clinton emails from hackers listed senior members of the Trump campaign, including some who now serve as top aides in the White House, in a recruitment document for his effort.

The activist, Peter W. Smith, named the officials in a section of the document marked “Trump Campaign.” The document was dated Sept. 7, 2016. That was around the time Mr. Smith said he started his search for 33,000 emails Mrs. Clinton deleted from the private server she used for official business while secretary of state. She said the deleted emails concerned personal matters. She turned over tens of thousands of other emails to the State Department.

But also, the @pwnallthethings dude's story has gone live...and it's a doozy.

https://lawfareblog.com/time-i-got-recruited-collude-russians

I read the Wall Street Journal’s article yesterday on attempts by a GOP operative to recover missing Hillary Clinton emails with more than usual interest. I was involved in the events that reporter Shane Harris described, and I was an unnamed source for the initial story. What’s more, I was named in, and provided the documents to Harris that formed the basis of, this evening’s follow-up story...

Although it wasn’t initially clear to me how independent Smith’s operation was from Flynn or the Trump campaign, it was immediately apparent that Smith was both well connected within the top echelons of the campaign and he seemed to know both Lt. Gen. Flynn and his son well. Smith routinely talked about the goings on at the top of the Trump team, offering deep insights into the bizarre world at the top of the Trump campaign. Smith told of Flynn’s deep dislike of DNI Clapper, whom Flynn blamed for his dismissal by President Obama. Smith told of Flynn’s moves to position himself to become CIA Director under Trump, but also that Flynn had been persuaded that the Senate confirmation process would be prohibitively difficult. He would instead therefore become National Security Advisor should Trump win the election, Smith said. He also told of a deep sense of angst even among Trump loyalists in the campaign, saying “Trump often just repeats whatever he’s heard from the last person who spoke to him,” and expressing the view that this was especially dangerous when Trump was away....

Then, a few weeks into my interactions with Smith, he sent me a document, ostensibly a cover page for a dossier of opposition research to be compiled by Smith’s group, and which purported to clear up who was involved. The document was entitled “A Demonstrative Pedagogical Summary to be Developed and Released Prior to November 8, 2016,” and dated September 7. It detailed a company Smith and his colleagues had set up as a vehicle to conduct the research: “KLS Research”, set up as a Delaware LLC “to avoid campaign reporting,” and listing four groups who were involved in one way or another.

The first group, entitled “Trump Campaign (in coordination to the extent permitted as an independent expenditure)” listed a number of senior campaign officials: Steve Bannon, Kellyanne Conway, Sam Clovis, Lt. Gen. Flynn and Lisa Nelson.

The largest group named a number of “independent groups / organizations / individuals / resources to be deployed.” My name appears on this list. At the time, I didn’t recognize most of the others; however, several made headlines in the weeks immediately prior to the election....

I’m sure readers are wondering: why did I keep quiet at the time? Actually, I didn’t. In the fall, prior to the election, I discussed the events of the story first with a friend, and secondly with a journalist. The trouble was that neither I nor the reporter in question knew what to make of the whole operation. It was certainly clear that the events were bizarre, and deeply unsettling. But it wasn’t reportable.

After all, Clinton’s private emails never materialized. We couldn’t show that Smith had been in contact with actual Russians. And while I believed—as I still do—that he was operating with some degree of coordination with the campaign, that was at least a little murky too. The story just didn’t make much sense—that is, until the Journal yesterday published the critical fact that U.S. intelligence has reported that Russian hackers were looking to get emails to Flynn through a cut-out during the Summer of 2016, and this was no idle speculation on my part.

Suddenly, my story seemed important—and ominous.

Meantime

U.S. prosecutor in Manhattan to join office of Robert Mueller, who is overseeing the Trump-Russia inquiry https://t.co/6QBJs35jci

— NYT Metro (@NYTMetro) July 1, 2017

I hadn't seen the actual text of the request for voter info until that response from Mississippi, and I gotta say it makes these "refusals" a lot less impressive since it specifically asks only for that information which is already publicly available per state law. All of these press releases announcing that no private information will be shared with the commission are essentially saying "we won't provide what we haven't been asked for." Yes it's nice to see the Ohio Secretary asserting that their elections are not affected by widespread voter fraud, but beyond that this narrative that states are pushing back against the commission, at least in terms of this request, strikes me as (if you'll excuse the phrase) fake news.

NOT EXCUSED