On Thursday, the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, which is chaired by Rep. Elijah Cummings, subpoenaed emails and texts sent to and from White House officials (Jarvanka) on personal accounts — you know, activities similar to those that allegedly made Hillary Clinton an intolerable national security threat. Cummings issued a statement, excerpted below:
“The Committee has obtained direct evidence that multiple high-level White House officials have been violating the Presidential Records Act by using personal email accounts, text messaging services, and even encrypted applications for official business—and not preserving those records in compliance with federal law. What we do not yet know is why these White House officials were attempting to conceal these communications. Although our Committee’s investigation began as a bipartisan inquiry under former Chairmen Chaffetz and Gowdy, the White House has refused to produce a single piece of paper in this investigation for this entire year, which is why today’s subpoena has become necessary.”
This morning, Rage-oholic Foxbot Grandpa experienced a pants-pissing, remote control-throwing, projection-filled meltdown on the Twitter:
This sequence of events is surely as coincidental as the fact that every time Trump describes some awful shithole no “human” would tolerate, the geographical location so depicted is always populated by more people of color than white folks.
In future coincidences, the crack New York Times political team will yawn at email stories in 2020.
debbie
Let’s investigate your corrupt mess, you Asshole.
Another Scott
Donnie is so horrible. But we all know this.
The House must keep pushing.
Where’s DougJ! and his Thermometers?
The best thing we can do right now to maximize the Blue Wave in 2020 is to get it going in Virginia in 2019:
Eyes on the prize(s).
Cheers,
Scott.
chris
Just gonna leave this little ray of sunshine here.
Betty Cracker
@debbie: The tell is always there, isn’t it? I’m glad the House is pulling at the corruption threads too; we’ve never had a more target-rich environment for that line of inquiry. Also hope our eventual nominee makes corruption a top issue in 2020. Warren’s Anti-Corruption and Public Integrity Act is a great blueprint, no matter who wins the primary. Harris could bring her prosecutorial skills to bear if she’s the nominee. But seriously, any of our candidates are as pure as the driven snow compared to the pack of ravening grift-mavens in the current administration.
debbie
@Betty Cracker:
I wonder if this is a new symptom of his dementia. The distractions he’s come with lately only point right back at him. He’s losing his touch.
BR
I didn’t get it until now — apparently every one of his tweets is just echoing what he saw on Fox, and then all the other media pick it up. That means that Fox now has a way to directly control the rest of the media and get their talking points echoed throughout the country, to people who don’t watch Fox.
We need to start working the refs — calling the media regularly. Anyone know of who to call to lodge complaints with the major networks (CBS, ABC, NBC, NPR) and CNN, and major papers (NYT, WP, WSJ)? It would be nice to put that up once a week on the front page.
WereBear
@BR: We have been doing that since the W years without making a dent.
They can’t be reformed. They need their licenses yanked.
Kay
I think it’s great for us. It will just energize our base. The President is launching completely unprovoked, mean-spirited and lying attacks on the parts of the country he has disdain for.
They should do some more cities. Attack the cities in every D’s district. That’s pretty much all the cities.
Imagine if Joe Biden launched a nasty attack on the state of North Dakota, or Alabama. The GOP would be thrilled.
Another Scott
BTW, if you haven’t read Mark Bowen’s version of the Mueller Report, you should. It’s quite well done.
Cheers,
Scott.
Kay
The people in the Trump Administration lie constantly so it’s hard to tell but does this sound like a confident campaign?
Maybe the re-elect looks worse than we’re told. I don’t remember Obama launching attacks on GOP areas of the country in his re-elect and it wasn’t a sure thing.
Frankensteinbeck
@BR:
This has been done. It is often done now. Hacks regularly get intense blowback, mockery and scolding from liberals. Do you know how they react?
With pride. They say it proves they’re doing their job of being bipartisan.
The pushback is worth doing, but we shouldn’t fool ourselves into thinking it will solve the problem.
SRW1
Old man in DC residence yells at flat screen and hammers keyboard.
What else is new?
Kay
I’m pleased he’s doing his job. Standards shouldn’t be lowered to reach the level of the low quality Trump hires. Keep the standard, ditch the low quality hire who can’t meet it.
There are probably triple digits of violations that can be pursued like this. It’s a big job to have only one chamber of congress doing, but the rest of them should get on it.
DeVos has a scandal now. There are emails, and a lie to congress from one of her shitty, bottom of the barrel hires. Give someone that. Democrats loath her and she isn’t qualified for the job anyway. Easy pick’ins.
Mai Naem mobile
@chris: I had to get some aimple legal work done and used a legal preparer. Anyhow everything was done by email and mail till the end when I met her at her house. She turned out to be a climate denier. Had one of those blue lives stickers. Ugh. I wish i had used someone else. She was confusing climate with weather. I hate these people.
trnc
The White House and Senate are a disgusting, republican infested mess.
Mai Naem mobile
I am tired of the subpoenas and hearings. I want a Republican scalp gotten by the Dems. One of these assholes needs to be in prison. I don’t know why Bill Barr is not being impeached. The process well at least keep him busy from doing as much damage as he could.
Frankensteinbeck
@Mai Naem mobile:
Please tell us how this can be done. He has already been held in contempt, and has said he won’t prosecute himself. That means it goes through the courts, which is an incredibly slow process.
Because he can’t be removed without Republican cooperation that will not happen.
I don’t see why it would. Refusing to show up at hearings doesn’t take much time.
Fighting is good. We need to fight. There are no easy and quick answers, none, and the only real, long-term answer is a long haul battle at the voting booths.
A Ghost To Most
The icons you added to the tweets brought to mind a popular cartoon character from my yoot: Rat Fink. T is the very essence.
Frankensteinbeck
@Frankensteinbeck:
I want to add, in general about this whole mess and what to do: You know why I voted in 2018? It wasn’t to stop Trump. The House can wound him here and there, but only the 2020 election can stop him. I voted to stop McConnell from eliminating Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security the way he promised to do. I got my wish.
BR
@Kay:
If he comes for Obama again I think he doesn’t know what he’s in for. I think the Dem base (and certainly me) feel differently about Obama than pretty much anyone else.
BR
@Frankensteinbeck:
I don’t know that they get the same intensity of pushback from regular Dem folks the way they do from frothy Fox News viewers who probably regularly call and shout at them.
BR
@Frankensteinbeck:
There’s a really important reason to start to impeach Barr, even if it never comes to a vote. It makes it clear that everything he does should be considered partisan and suspect and will maybe slightly make the press less willing to give him the benefit of the doubt when he makes bogus claims and launches bogus investigations, which he’s going to definitely do over the next year.
MagdaInBlack
I dont know why we think they (the media ) arent doing their jobs. Their job is to keep their jobs. Period.
Frankensteinbeck
@BR:
Do you think they care about some poorly paid staffer having to listen to angry phone calls? Nobody gets to call Chuck Todd and yell at him in person, conservative or liberal. Liberals push back in the forums that the media assholes read, and said assholes mostly pat themselves on the back about it. It has some effect. Occasionally they remove a tweet or article. Loud public pushback informs people who want to learn, which I think is an excellent reason to keep doing it. It’s just that working the refs did not get the national news to lean Republican. Those refs wanted to be worked by Republicans, and don’t care what we think. We can’t expect to get the same results.
EDIT – Let me provide a major example to make my point. Remember media coverage of Hillary Clinton in 2016, and Lauer at the debates. Remember #MeToo hitting the media later. Conservative grassroot pressure had nothing to do with how they treated Hillary. The media was already infested and dominated by stone-cold sexual predator misogynists, acting the way sexual predator misogynists act. Do you think this doesn’t extend to every other aspect of political coverage?
Brachiator
@Kay:
Yes. This is what Trump does. It’s what he has always done.
He thinks that keeping his base fired up is the path to victory.
Of course, the GOP must help, by providing voter suppression and other tricks.
Frankensteinbeck
@Brachiator:
My great hope is that it didn’t work in 2018. The base was fired up, but liberals were fired up much more. I don’t think that’s going to change in 2020.
Baud
@Frankensteinbeck:
The NYT reads the outrage, checks its increase in subscriptionship from liberals since Trump’s election, and cuts a fat bonus check to Maggie for a job well done.
Another Scott
In other news, NBC4:
:-/
Seriously, she’s a symptom.
Our biggest problem as a species is people who cannot tell truth from lies and who are manipulated by others who use them for power and money.
In addition to a Green New Deal, we need a Journey to the Center of the Mind (for want of a better term). We need to figure out how our brains work and how to prevent them from being manipulated for counter-productive and even evil purposes. Our problems are too big, and too easily solvable, to let monsters manipulate us like this.
It’s a serious problem that will get worse with the continued rise of weaponized AI. We need to take it seriously.
Cheers,
Scott.
Another Scott
@Another Scott: And, of course, my comment gets thrown in the FYWP dungeon.
Help?
Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
The Dangerman
Trump or Hitler quote?
Frankensteinbeck
@Baud:
You are right, but I do think it goes beyond that, because when it’s not the right path financially they still double down. Emails was the most boring story imaginable, with only the tiniest drops of progress happening over time. It’s the last story you would want to make your major theme if you were going for clicks and eyeballs. It’s dull. The vast majority of media outlets followed it obsessively as their major election theme. They actively wanted to hurt Hillary.
Brachiator
@Kay:
You wrote very eloquently about this in the previous thread.
Thing is, Trump doesn’t care about standards. And he deliberately chooses people based on loyalty and a willingness to do vile things.
Mandalay
@BR:
“Again”???
He does it constantly. Here’s the latest:
At least his minders have got him using “Democrat” instead of “Democratic”.
lumpkin
I guess Maggie Haberman will be asking trump why members of his staff are allowed to use their own private email and why they haven’t released them voluntarily like Hillary did.
BR
@Mandalay:
That’s what I’m referring to. It’s been a while since he openly attacked Obama directly, and the claim he would investigate Obama is something I think will wake people up. (There’s no bottom though so I know it will get worse over the next year.)
lurker dean
great thread on the complete failure of today’s media:
Baud
@Frankensteinbeck:
I agree completely. I’m just saying our criticism of the media is largely useless because we have no way of putting our money where our mouth is. The right has their own media they can turn to.
lamh36
BAM!!!!
Thank you my brother! Thank you!!!
Victor Blackwell of CNN this morning on Chumps latest racist rant about Cummings and Baltimore!
I know a lot of folks from Baltimore and I’m sure they feel the same!
https://twitter.com/wesleylowery/status/1155121801711820800?s=21
Brachiator
@Frankensteinbeck:
Yes, Trump is very vulnerable. He likes to belittle the opposition, but I think that he also underestimates the opposition.
However, Trump is not a political genius, but he does have a certain low cunning. He thinks that white racial resentment can be stronger than political ideology or traditional party loyalties. This will be his focus in the swing states.
Gin & Tonic
@lamh36: Very. very powerful. Thank you.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: The NYT is garbage. Heard it here on this very blog.
lamh36
@lamh36: in the clip Blackwell talks about the fact that in all the thousands of insulting tweets Chump has before and after becoming POTUS…he only ever used the word “infested” when insulting places (or persons) with Black and or Brown people.
Seriously watch the clip…very poweful
Sab
@Betty Cracker: I just had lunch yesterday with RWNJ (libertarian, not a nazi) relative who probably agrees with you. He used to be a Republican activist. He has left the Party, told them so when they called to ask him for help, and now supports E. Warren because of anti-corruption. Final straw for him was the tax cuts. He’s fiscal conservative.
rikyrah
@Frankensteinbeck:
Lots of folks overlook that November 2018 saved the American Social Safety Net.
As plain as day, they were coming for it, using deficits, caused by their phucking tax cuts to justify it.???
zhena gogolia
@lamh36:
That is beautiful.
Brachiator
@lamh36:
Blackwell’s response to Trump is magnificent. His pause was heartbreaking.
I hate Trump all the more for the pain he tries to inflict. And it makes the courage of good people like Blackwell stand out even more clearly.
tobie
I lived in MD-07 for years and I can think of few politicians more beloved in their district than Elijah Cummings. He turns up to just about every local event. I saw him in May at a rally, and though he walks now with a walker, his voice is still fiery.
@lamh36: Every word of Victor Blackwell’s comment on CNN is powerful and true.
zhena gogolia
@lurker dean:
She had me until “Why don’t we hear how much Pelosi’s district hates her?”
Ceci n est pas mon nym
Impeachment investigation has begun.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/07/why-were-moving-forward-impeachment/594931/
Mary Gay Scanlon is my Congress person. I’m so proud!
opiejeanne
@zhena gogolia: Say what? Pelosi’s district hates her?
Who is this twit?
lamh36
Cummings response…still advocating for his constituents
https://twitter.com/repcummings/status/1155132215208161281?s=21
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@zhena gogolia: I bailed when she followed up “get your reporters off twitter” (good idea), then said “AOC is setting the tone for the House” (critic, heal thyself), so until you sent me back to the thread I hadn’t seen this
Miss Bianca
@zhena gogolia: Yeah, me too. Then I was instantly: ” ‘scuse me, you talk about how important multiple sources are – where and how many are *your* sources for this assertion?”
Frankensteinbeck
@Brachiator:
He’s sort of wrong and sort of right, there. White racial resentment runs the GOP, and he flies the white supremacy flag openly, so they love him like no one before. It is the message that works with the GOP, and anyone pretending otherwise is a fool. Like a lot of racists and misogynists, it is obvious to him that almost all whites are on his side, and he just needs to remind them of what the conflict really is. There he is direly wrong, and it hurt him in 2018.
@rikyrah:
McConnell literally said it out loud, with no euphemisms or equivocation, in a public speech. He planned on using the next year’s budget reconciliation to cut Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security into effective nonexistence. Electing a Democratic House stopped that, and it was the most important battle we could have won.
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Sounds like the Wilmeresque method of strating off saying good things, and then veering off into crazy land.
Yarrow
The media people whose bylines we see or who are on our TVs are working for their bosses and doing what they’re told to do. It may also be what they themselves want to do, but in the end they report to their bosses. The owners of the media companies are getting what they want out of them or they’d be gone.
If you want to change the media, look at the top people at those companies and see who owns them. Are they compromised? Certainly the MeToo revelations about people like Roger Ailes and Les Moonves indicate there was blackmail material. Who had that information? How was it being used?
Appealing to these corporate owners’ moral and ethical “better selves” will do nothing. Talking about their “integrity” and the “crisis of journalism” will do nothing. Figure out what motivates them and apply the appropriate pressure.
smintheus
I was born in Baltimore many decades ago and moved away at the age of 3 months because my parents did not want to live there. The reason they fled was because it was infested with racism and they didn’t want their children to grow up listening to bigots.
zhena gogolia
@Miss Bianca:
Yeah, she’s all “we have a crisis of the disappearance of objective journalism,” but somehow her wish list involves elevating the AOC narrative.
Miss Bianca
@zhena gogolia: And I suppose it’s petty to note that she takes to Twitter to castigate other political journalists for being on Twitter. Maybe because she figured she wouldn’t reach them any other way?
ETA: To say nothing of the fact that her apparent fave rave AOC is a *masterful* Twitterer. I think the points she makes about sourcing etc. are valid – but I think Twitter is part of the media landscape now, for good or for ill.
lamh36
Oh.. Here comes Guiliani, trumps bootlicker chiming in…just in case anyone really believed Chumps rant wasn’t a racist hit job.
This time Harlem was mentioned. Who wants to bet the next RWNJ mentions Chicago next. don’t even fall for the okey doke
https://twitter.com/rudygiuliani/status/1155123943596015621?s=21
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@rikyrah: @Frankensteinbeck:
I remember when Conor Lamb won and The Village was all a-flutter about his “anti-Pelosi” campaign. I tuned in to watch his victory speech. He didn’t mention Pelosi, he talked about FDR and protecting Social Security. I wonder if any Dems will think to bring this up in the next debate.
zhena gogolia
@Miss Bianca:
Guess so.
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Sure, but his eyes were probably blinking “Pelosi is the devil.”
tobie
@zhena gogolia: I saw that thread yesterday, I think, and Moore destroyed whatever credibility she had by charging Pelosi with sexism based in God knows what sources. Evidently she doesn’t practice what she preaches.
Yarrow
@zhena gogolia: Even worse, “How did Pelosi get a reputation as a feminist despite consistently undermining women?” Yikes. Who is this Heidi Moore person. WTF?
Zinsky
It must really gall Trumpo for a black man like Cummings to be dogging him for his lies and criminality. It would be poetic justice if Cummings would bring this narcissistic pervert crashing to Earth!
zhena gogolia
Russians are protesting for free and fair elections again. They risk arrest and beatings.
https://twitter.com/varlamov/status/1155111034681724930
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: Yup, in Morse Code.
smintheus
Something to cheer you up: A great new Democratic backed law in PA that allows children in foster care to attend college (public or private) for free.
MagdaInBlack
@Yarrow:
Thank you.
James E Powell
@Baud:
Pausing now and then to share a laugh at our expense.
john fremont
@Kay: They never forgot about Obama’s remark about “…clinging to guns and religion.”
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@john fremont: and nothing proves their own elitism better than the Noble Savage idea underlying all the Cletus Safaris (h/t, I believe, Mr Pierce). ‘We know, of course, that these good, godly doughty heartland folk aren’t racists, so how to explain their expressions of racism and their support of a racist president?’
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@smintheus:
It isn’t free – somebody has to pay for it, and I genuinely wish that progressives would ditch that framing, as really great programs that can be done from the economy of scale become impossible to sell to the general public.
Contrary to what that lazy, useless simpleton from Vermont says, nothing is free – it is a question of return on investment and whether public funding is both doable and prudent.
That leads to a more rational discussion on everything from SNAP to college funding to loan forgiveness to single payer health care.
Baud
@john fremont:
They still resent things from the 70s. Their memory is the one thing they have in common with elephants, who are noble creatures who don’t deserve to be their symbol.
Neldob
@BR: Totally do it and keep doing it. Find the info on the web, get your friends to call out the Republican lies and corruption. I write and call. The sqeaky wheel gets the grease. If we don’t stand up to the right wing press and their shifty talking points it will be the right wing that calls the shots. Don’t be discouraged. Play the long game. Chive on.
Uncle Cosmo
@lamh36: Just FTR I have lived in MD-07 for over 30 years, Elijah Cummings is a national treasure, & Cheetoh Benito can go fuck himself with a rusty chainsaw. If there is anyplace in the USA that’s infested with vermin & desperately needs fumigations, it’s the White House.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@Uncle Cosmo:
This. No lie. I’m so sick of the racist garbage that is now a daily feature of our national discourse, thanks to the Republicans and Russians who forced Trump on us (and are trying to do so again). Fuck that shit.
zhena gogolia
The Russian thing is really upsetting. I wonder if our media will even cover it.
Every American should look at the videos, because this is how Trump would like to handle public protest here as well.
Neldob
@rikyrah: Yep. And they are still coming for it.
sixthdoctor
Since the President insulted my hometown, I think it’s fair to point out that I’ve played at dozens of casino and the only place I ever played where the chips were STUCK TOGETHER WITH FILTH was the Trump Taj Mahal…
Yutsano
@zhena gogolia: Oh ye gods the woman in the front…I was worried this was going to degenerate into a Tiananmen Square moment.
Litlebritdifrnt
@lamh36: I just watched that and it made me want to cry and then throw my laptop out of the window. It truly was heartfelt.
A Ghost To Most
@Miss Bianca: That’s the problem with Jacobins. They have a tendency to turn on the insufficiently pure.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I think back to Mags and a colleague tweeting during the Mueller’s testimony that it would be forgotten in a week. If they want to snark about the job, as everyone does, they should have private accounts
IIRC Ezra Klein’s famous fuck Tim Russert with a spiky, acid-tipped dick (again, IIRC) happened when he confused his public and private accounts.
hitchhiker
Every morning I wake up and for a few brief moments lie quietly, imagining opening my phone to the news that trump has had a massive stroke.
It’s pleasant and starts me off in a good mood, which lasts until I decide to glance at the actual news.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
debbie
@zhena gogolia:
Yes, he’s also channeling his inner Duterte: I heard him talk approvingly about executing drug dealers.
frosty
@hitchhiker: Meh, that would get us Pence and all the crime and corruption would be swept under the rug. I want him alive, voted out, then indicted.
ETA Impeached, convicted, and thrown out would be good too, but that still gives us Pence who might possibly win in 2020.
Omnes Omnibus
@lamh36: I am glad you posted that. I came to the site to put in a link to it if no one else that done it yet.
zhena gogolia
@debbie:
He and Barr are reviving Federal executions. (to use a mixed metaphor)
Ruckus
@Another Scott:
I also recommend reading this, it is very good.
Ruckus
@Yarrow:
I’d bet on money and racism.
Ruckus
@zhena gogolia:
I’d bet they risk more than arrest and beatings.
And did they ever really have free and fair elections? It’s more like they are protesting to get free and fair elections. As are we.
J R in WV
Trump and his minions have been found to be using private email accounts, even encrypted email tools, to prevent knowledge of their plans to steal from government accounts, to break the law, to commit crimes. They violate the Hatch Act every day, barely keeping those criminal acts confidential.
Hillary used a private email server to discuss her grandchildren’s birthday parties, babysitting assignments, the schedule for private things like medical appointments.
Can anyone see a difference between these purposes? One is family related and honest. One is criminal and corrupt. But the NYT can’t tell the difference at all? No, they can’t. Sad but true.
jl
Thanks for post. First heard about these tweets on national top of the hour news broadcast. Read in full with very little comment, but which was accurate about their nature. Fine with me. Probably didn’t need any comment, except for the basest of the Trump base, and for them, no comment would help them understand.
Anyway, now I know what prompted Trump to this latest self-destructive outrage. Hope he keeps this shit up all the way to Nov 2020. Normally that would not be the healthiest type of thing to hope for, but given that the alternative is more time for Trump to think up more human rights abuses, more executive power grabs, and more war scares, probably destroying himself with sick and twisted, deranged, tweets is best we can expect to happen.