CHARLAMANGE THE GOD TAGS KEVIN HUNTER AS DONKEY OF THE DAY (“DO DO BROWN” FROM BROWNSVILLE”):
CHARLAMANGE SAYS KEVIN USED WENDY’S MONEY TO BUY SHARINA HUDSON A PUSH PRESENT (GOLD FERRARI)....WENDY HAD IT TOWED.
CHARLAMANGE REVEALED IT WAS KEVIN HUNTER WHO FED LIES TO THE MEDIA ABOUT CHARLAMANGE BEING A RAPIST.
CHARLAMANGE WRAPPED UP HIS “DONKEY OF THE DAY” SEGMENT BY STATING THAT KEVIN SHOULD HAVE BEEN KISSING WENDY’S FEET INSTEAD OF KISSING SHARINA HUDSON’S BUTT.
I CONCUR.
HATS OFF TO WENDY & CHARLAMANGE & ARMON WIGGINS :-)
BE CAREFUL HOW YOU DISRESPECT PEOPLE, ESPECIALLY YOUR LEGAL WIFE.
KARMA IS A B___TCH.
ALIENATION OF AFFECTION
Post Sources: THE BREAKFAST CLUB, Daily Mail, Youtube
***** Charlamagne Slams Kevin Hunter Amid Wendy Williams Divorce Scandal
Donkey of The Day For April 17th, 2019 goes to none other than Kevin Hunter the soon to be ex husband of Wendy Williams.
While there are many reports going around, it has been confirmed that Wendy Williams served up a whole plate of divorce papers to Kevin Hunter the other day in their apartment, it was then soon after this that he issued an apology to Williams breaking his silence for the first time saying: "28 years ago I met an amazing woman: Wendy Williams. At the time, I didn't realize that she would not only become my wife, but would also change the face of entertainment and the world," the statement began. "I have dedicated most of our lives to the business empire that is Wendy Williams Hunter, a person that I truly love and respect unconditionally".
Adding on to the drama it was also reported that Hunter was fired from her his executive producer roll on The Wendy Williams Show. However these reports are false but a statement from TMZ revealed his time may be up soon, "Reports that Kevin Hunter has been fired are not accurate. He has not been fired, but as we reported, it's just a matter of time. He WILL be gone from the show ... but it hasn't happened yet".
In today's Donkey of The Day Charlamagne Tha God revealed why he dislikes Kevin including reports that Hunter raped his own artist, stopping him from getting bags as well as telling DJ Envy & Angela Yee false statements about him before the BREAKFAST CLUB was formed.
REGARDLESS OF WHAT LIES THE RACIST MAINSTREAM MEDIA POSTS, KIM CAN NEVER BE REPLACED IN DIDDY’S LIFE NOR THE LIVES OF HIS CHILDREN.
KIM PORTER WAS NOT A “BABY MAMA”, SHE WAS A BEAUTIFUL, INTELLIGENT, LOVING MOTHER WHO DIED MUCH TOO SOON.
I’M NOT JUDGING BUT I KNOW DIDDY TRULY LOVED KIM AND HE SHOULD HAVE MARRIED HER.
I’M JUST SAYING.
PLEASE EVERYONE PRAY FOR ALL OF DIDDY’S CHILDREN.
Post Sources: Instagram, People, Youtube
”For the last three days I’ve been trying to wake up out of this nightmare. But I haven’t. I don’t know what I’m going to do without you baby. I miss you so much. Today I’m going to pay tribute to you, I’m going to try and find the words to explain our unexplainable relationship. We were more than best friends, we were more than soulmates. WE WERE SOME OTHER SHIT!! And I miss you so much. Super Black Love 🖤”
CHRISTINE FORD vs BRETT KAVANAUGH - 36 YRS AGO WHO REMEMBERS ALL DETAILS ACCURATELY?
DIDN’T THIS INCIDENT OCCURR IN HIGH SCHOOL?
I’M NOT MOCKING CHRISTINE FORD NOR AM I TRYING TO SOUND HYPOCRITICAL BUT WHY IS IT ALWAYS LIKE THIS FOR GOP SCOTUS COURT NOMINEES? WHY??
I WAS TRYING TO REMAIN SILENT BUT I HAD TO SPEAK UP.
THIS DRAMA IS NOT ABOUT PROTECTING WOMEN, IT’S STRAIGHT POLITICAL THEATER.
Post Sources: BBC News, Fox News, NBC News, Washington Post, Youtube
***** Christine Blasey Ford and Brett Kavanaugh hearing: Key takeaways so far
With a seat on the Supreme Court hanging in the balance, Christine Blasey Ford and Brett Kavanaugh are appearing in front of senators to state their case and share their stories. Here are some of the key takeaways so far.
Everyone knew what Christine Blasey Ford was going to say before the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Thursday morning. Her formal opening statement was released to the public on Wednesday evening.
Reading what she was going to say and hearing her speak it, in a quiet, sometimes faltering voice, are two very different things, however.
The committee hearing began with statements by Republican chairman Chuck Grassley and ranking Democrat Dianne Feinstein, and the exchanging accusations of political obfuscation and procedural misconduct threatened to cover the proceedings in a political fog.
For a taut 20 minutes, however, Ms Ford cut through the fog with searing emotion. She spoke of traumatic memories and decades of shame; of a civic duty to come forward and recent months of hounding media and death threats.
The images of her speaking - the first glimpse the public at large has had of her besides a few grainy photos - will linger well beyond Thursday's hearing or even Brett Kavanaugh's ultimate professional fate.
Once Ms Ford concluded, the fog descended again. Thanks in large part to a disjointed format that featured five-minute segments alternating between veteran sex-crimes prosecutor Rachel Mitchell, a surrogate questioner for the Republicans, and Democratic senators, there was little flow to proceedings.
It was as if viewers were flipping back and forth between a CourtTV criminal cross-examination and a public-access television congressional hearing.
Democrats succeeded in gleaning a few memorable moments from Ms Ford. She said she was 100% certain that Brett - referring to Mr Kavanaugh repeatedly by his first name - was the teenager who assaulted her.
She also, in reply to a question by Vermont Democrat Pat Leahy, recounted how the enduring recollection she has from the incident was Mr Kavanaugh and his friend, Mark Judge, laughing as they stumbled down the stairs after the alleged attack.
Ms Mitchell, in her interrogation, pulled at a number of threads in Ms Ford's story.
Who drove her to and from the house on the night of the party?
Why did she tell Senate investigators that she couldn't meet them in Washington because she was afraid of flying if she frequently travelled by air for pleasure?
Did she or did she not share her 2012 therapist records with a reporter from the Washington Post?
That final line of questioning is key, since it's those records that help corroborate that Ms Ford had spoken about the assault well before Mr Kavanaugh became a candidate for the Supreme Court.
The other questions seemed more geared toward undermining Ms Ford's credibility - the kind of strategy useful during depositions or trials to undermine a jury's trust in a witness or, perhaps, force them to crack under the accumulated pressure of the interrogation.
Every five minutes, however, Democrats threw Ms Ford a lifeline.
In the end, however, Ms Mitchell herself seemed slightly exasperated by the format she was working under. When it comes to trying to arrive at the accurate recollection of trauma, she said, "there's no study that shows that this setting, in five-minute increments, is the best way to do that.
As the first half of the hearing drew to a close, the senators began to argue about entering various outside statements into the record, only to be interrupted by one of Ms Ford's lawyers.
"Can we be excused?" he asked.
With the partisan fog thick again, it's a sentiment many Americans may have shared.
OMAROSA SAID "EVERYONE WILL BOW DOWN TO TRUMP" BEFORE SHE WAS FIRED BY JOHN KELLY.
OMAROSA CALLED TRUMP "TRAILBLAZER FOR WOMEN" BEFORE SHE WAS ESCORTED BY SECRET SERVICE OUT OF TRUMP'S ADMINISTRATION.
IF OMAROSA WILL TURN ON TRUMP.....A MAN WHO MADE HER FAMOUS, SHE WILL TURN ON ANYONE....SHE CAN'T BE TRUSTED & GIVES BLACK WOMEN A BAD NAME.
Post Sources: CNN, Twitter, MSNBC, Youtube
Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump)
..."really bad things. Nasty to people & would constantly miss meetings & work. When Gen. Kelly came on board he told me she was a loser & nothing but problems. I told him to try working it out, if possible, because she only said GREAT things about me - until she got fired!"
The White House struggled on Wednesday to contain a political outcry and confusion over U.S. President Donald Trump’s summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin, denying Trump ever meant to say that Moscow was no longer targeting the United States.
Trump, facing uproar over his failure to confront Putin over Russia’s 2016 U.S. election meddling, adopted his usual defiant posture two days after their Helsinki summit and called his critics deranged.
Asked by a journalist before a morning Cabinet meeting whether Russia was still targeting the United States, Trump looked at the reporter, shook his head and said, “No.”
At a later briefing, White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said the president was saying “no” to answering questions, not to the question itself.
U.S. intelligence officials have said Russia’s efforts to undermine elections are continuing and now target the Nov. 6 congressional races. Sanders said Trump believes the threat from Russia to undermine those elections still exists.
Asked later in an interview with CBS News whether he held Putin personally responsible for meddling in the 2016 election, Trump said he did.
“Well, I would, because he’s in charge of the country. Just like I consider myself to be responsible for things that happen in this country,” he said.
The U.S. president said that in his talks with Putin, he was “very strong on the fact that we can’t have meddling, we can’t have any of that.” But Trump also appeared to question whether such statements would have an impact on Russia. “We’re also living in a grown-up world,” he said.
Sanders explanation of Trump’s “No” was the second time since Monday’s summit that Trump and the White House have blamed a misstatement or misunderstanding for the furor over Russia.
On Tuesday, Trump said he misspoke at a Helsinki news conference with Putin and that he accepted intelligence agency conclusions about Russian election meddling, although he hedged by deviating from his prepared notes to say “it could be other people also. There’s a lot of people out there.”
Trump stunned the world on Monday by shying away from criticizing the Russian leader for Moscow’s actions to undermine the election, sparking bipartisan fury at home and prompting calls by some U.S. lawmakers for tougher sanctions and other actions to punish Russia.
Critics have accused Trump of siding with Russia over his own country by failing to criticize Moscow for what U.S. intelligence agencies last year described as Russia’s election interference in an attempt to sow discord, aid Trump’s candidacy and disparage Trump’s Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton.
Putin has denied the allegations.
‘DOING VERY WELL’
“We’re doing very well, probably as well as anybody has ever done with Russia. And there’s been no president ever as tough as I have been on Russia,” Trump said before the Cabinet meeting, adding that Putin “understands it and he’s not happy about it.”
In a series of early morning Twitter posts, the Republican president said the summit would eventually produce “big results” and accused his critics of “Trump Derangement Syndrome.”
“Some people HATE the fact that I got along well with President Putin of Russia. They would rather go to war than see this. It’s called Trump Derangement Syndrome!” the president wrote.
U.S. Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats told a congressional committee in February he already had seen evidence Russia was targeting November’s elections when Republican control of the House of Representatives and Senate is at stake.
In rebutting Trump’s dismissive comments about U.S. intelligence on Monday, Coats said, “We have been clear in our assessments of Russian meddling in the 2016 election and their ongoing, pervasive efforts to undermine our democracy.”
Top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer said Trump needed to wake up to Russia’s efforts to interfere in American elections.
“We won’t be able, as a nation, to fight back against foreign interference in our elections if the Commander in Chief doesn’t even acknowledge that it’s a real problem,” Schumer said in a statement.
Republican Senator John McCain accused Trump of “playing right into Putin’s hands” with the president’s comments in a Fox News interview on Tuesday that appeared to question the American commitment to defend all NATO allies.
Asked why Americans should defend NATO member Montenegro from attack, Trump said, “I’ve asked the same question. Montenegro is a tiny country with very strong people. ... They are very aggressive people, they may get aggressive, and congratulations, you are in World War Three.”
Montenegro joined NATO last year in defiance of Moscow after accusing Russian spies of orchestrating an attempted coup to derail the accession.
In his morning tweets, Trump said he elicited a promise from Putin during their meeting to help negotiations with North Korea, but did not say how. Trump met North Korea’s Kim Jong Un in June and has since received a letter from Kim expressing hope for “practical actions” in the future as the United States seeking Pyongyang’s denuclearization.
Russia’s RIA news agency, citing Moscow’s envoy to Pyongyang, reported that a summit between the leaders of Russia and North Korea is “on the agenda” and that it would be “logical” to raise the idea of lifting sanctions.
President Donald Trump is shaking up his legal team, again.
As negotiations continue with special counsel Robert Mueller on the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, the president has added a new lawyer and is considering making other changes.
The newest addition to the legal team has garnered attention for burnishing Trump on cable TV. Former federal prosecutor Joseph diGenova previously argued on Fox News that the Russia investigation was part of a “brazen plot” by FBI and Department of Justice staffers to frame Trump.
Trump’s legal team also reached out in recent days to noted D.C. powerhouse Ted Olson, solicitor general under President George W. Bush, but he declined within hours of the news becoming public. Trump is also reportedly in discussions with Emmett Flood, a veteran D.C. lawyer who worked with Bill Clinton during the impeachment.
The news contradicts Trump’s tweet on the subject earlier this month, in which he declared that he was not seeking to change his legal representation.
The Russia probe is not the only matter on which Trump is getting legal advice.
The president’s private lawyers are also currently working through separate lawsuits:
They are suing porn star Stormy Daniels for violating a hush agreement about her alleged affair with the president, while also defending Trump in a defamation lawsuit for calling former “Apprentice” contestant Summer Zervos a liar after she accused Trump of sexual assault.
Former Playboy model Karen McDougal is also suing the parent company of the National Enquirer, whose chief executive is friendly with Trump, seeking to be released from a legal agreement that bars her from speaking about an alleged affair with the president as well. Trump’s lawyers are not involved in that case.
~ Here’s a look at the lawyers representing Trump in the various matters.
~ Don McGahn
McGahn is the current White House counsel, the top lawyer tasked with advising the president on legal issues about policies and legislation. But McGahn has been at the center of controversies over Trump’s challenged travel ban, executive orders and the scandal surrounding former national security adviser Michael Flynn’s tenure in the White House, and Trump at one point handed off responsibility of Russia-related issues to his personal attorney. Before becoming White House counsel, McGahn was Trump’s lawyer on the campaign, and he previously served as a commissioner with the Federal Election Commission. McGahn reportedly threatened to quit when Trump asked him in 2017 to fire Mueller, and the president backed down.
~ Ty Cobb
A former federal prosecutor and a white-collar defense lawyer at the law firm Hogan Lovells in Washington, D.C., Cobb was at one point in charge of overseeing the legal strategy and media response to investigations into the Trump campaign’s alleged collusion with Russia. Trump has reportedly considered firing Cobb, who repeatedly said during 2017 that the Russia investigation would be finishing soon and encouraged the president to cooperate with Mueller. In September, Cobb was overheard by a reporter talking openly at a Washington restaurant about the investigation.
~ John Dowd
A noted white collar defense attorney in Washington, Dowd joined Trump’s legal team in June. He argued in December that a president cannot obstruct justice, a controversial legal theory that many experts disagree with. And in March, he told a reporter that he hopes Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein will shut down the Russia investigation, a break from Cobb’s talk of cooperating with Mueller. The remark led to questions about whether the president’s legal strategy on the Russia investigation was moving to a more aggressive stance.
~ Michael Cohen
Cohen is a personal lawyer, spokesperson and close confidant of Trump’s. He’s been working for Trump for years, closely enough that he has hired his own lawyer to help him with the Russia probe. He’s known as a particularly aggressive advocate on Trump’s behalf, Trump’s “pit bull or consigliere,” as ABC puts it, for threatening legal action against critics, yelling at reporters and vigorously defending his boss on Twitter.
~ Jay Sekulow
Sekulow is on Trump’s personal legal team advising him on Russia issues, and one of the lawyers who often appears in television hits. On Sunday on ABC, Sekulow said of Donald Trump Jr.’s Russian meeting, “Well, I wonder why the Secret Service, if this was nefarious, why the Secret Service allowed these people in.” The Secret Service responded and said it did not vet the meeting. Sekulow is Chief Counsel for the American Center for Law & Justice and hosts his own talk show, and before joining Trump’s team he had spent his legal career representing conservative groups.
~ Joseph diGenova
Trump added Joseph diGenova, a Washington lawyer and former U.S. attorney, to his legal team in March. Two months earlier, diGenova had gone on Fox News and endorsed the conspiracy theory that the FBI and Justice Department framed Trump. “There was a brazen plot to illegally exonerate Hillary Clinton and, if she didn’t win the election, to then frame Donald Trump with a falsely created crime,” he said. “Make no mistake about it: A group of F.B.I. and D.O.J. people were trying to frame Donald Trump of a falsely created crime.” It also emerged that during the investigation of President Bill Clinton in 1997, diGenova published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal arguing that sitting presidents can be indicted, a legal question that may take on new relevance under Mueller’s investigation.
~ Marc Kasowitz
Trump’s personal attorney, Kasowitz has represented Trump for years, including in divorces, bankruptcy cases and the sexual misconduct allegations that surfaced during the presidential campaign. He’s known for a fiery temper—in an email outburst published by ProPublica, Kasowitz told an unidentified person, “”F–k you… And you don’t know me, but I will know you. How dare you send me an email like that. I’m on you now. You are f–king with me now. Let’s see who you are. Watch your back b—h.” Kasowitz then reportedly left Trump’s legal team, but he has recently been working with Trump on the Zervos lawsuit.
Jimmy Kimmel was ready for the second round of his fight with U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy, saying on Wednesday night that the senator "either doesn't understand his own bill or he lied to me."
"Last night on our show I took a senator from Louisiana, Bill Cassidy, I took him to task for promising to my face that he would oppose any health care plan that allowed insurance companies to turn people with pre-existing conditions away," Kimmel said opening his ABC broadcast on Wednesday night. "He said anything he supported would have to pass what he named the 'Jimmy Kimmel Test,' which was fine... but unfortunately, and puzzlingly, he proposed a bill that would allow states to do all the things he said he would not let them do."
Kimmel then said that Cassidy made "a total about face" and that meant that "he either doesn't understand his own bill, or he lied to me."
The comedian then showed a clip of Cassidy telling CNN's Chris Cuomo on "New Day" Wednesday morning that Kimmel "does not understand" the bill.
"Oh, I get it. I don't understand because I'm a talk show host, right?" the host said before breaking down the bill in detail. "Could it be, Senator Cassidy, that the problem is that I do understand, and you got caught with your GOPenis out?"
On Tuesday night's broadcast, Kimmel took on the senate's new health care bill and Cassidy, saying he lied "right to my face." The Tuesday night monologue went viral and got around-the-clock coverage on cable news networks.
On Wednesday night's show, Kimmel also used a skit called "Barista Theater" to help explain one of the more arcane parts of the Graham-Cassidy bill: block grants. In the proposed legislation, federal funding for Medicaid expansion and subsidies would be rolled into a block grant program. States would be given a lump sum of money and would have a lot of leeway over how to spend it.
In Kimmel's sketch, he showed a barista accepting money for coffee sold in faulty coffee cups. He used the sketch to critique the bill for allowing states to accept federal money intended to make healthcare more accessible, but then keep the money without making care more available.
Kimmel jokingly said that he didn't "want to turn this into a Kanye and Taylor Swift type situation" while also taking down others, like "Fox & Friends" host Brian Kilmeade, who called Kimmel a "Hollywood elite."
"The reason I found this comment to be particularly annoying is because this is a guy, Brian Kilmeade, who whenever I see him kisses my ass like a little boy meeting Batman," Kimmel said. "He is dying to be a member of the 'Hollywood elite.'"
Kimmel also made fun of Sen. Lindsay Graham, who is a co-sponser of the new health care bill with Cassidy, saying Graham "happens to look a lot like my Grandma Jane, who is now deceased."
Kimmel also called out President Trump, saying that there's "no way" the president read the bill and just wants to get rid of it "because Obama's name is on it."
"The Democrats should just rename it Ivankacare," Kimmel said, referencing the president's daughter. "Guaranteed he gets on board."
Kimmel then ended his ten-minute-long monologue by encouraging Americans to call their senators about the new health care bill.
"Please, stop texting for five seconds and make a phone call," Kimmel said. "It really does make a difference, and who knows maybe you'll meet somebody over the phone and fall in love?"
Representatives for Cassidy, Fox News and the White House could not be reached for comment.
News flash to Jimmy Kimmel: Politicians are politicians.
The Jimmy Kimmel Live! host has used his show's monologues to speak out in favor of universal healthcare since he revealed in May in an emotional announcement on his show that his and wife Molly McNearney's second child together, son William "Billy" John Kimmel, had undergone emergency heart surgery to treat a congenital defect soon after he was born. He has also spoken out against President Donald Trump, who wants to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare.
Soon after his announcement about his son's ailment, Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy, who is also a gastroenterologist, told CNN that any healthcare bill should "pass the Jimmy Kimmel Test," meaning it would cover a child with congenital heart disease. He then appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live! and was asked by Kimmel if he thinks "every American, regardless of income should be able to get regular check-ups, maternity care, all of those things that people who have healthcare get and need?"
"Yep," he said, blinking.
Fast-forward to last week, when Cassidy and fellow Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham introduced a new healthcare bill that waives regulations that require insurers to cover certain benefits, would allow states to opt out of Affordable Care Act protections for consumers, give block grants to states to run their own healthcare programs and end an expansion of Medicaid for lower-income patients and the disabled.
"This new bill actually does pass the Jimmy Kimmel Test," Kimmel said on Tuesday's episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live! "But a different Jimmy Kimmel Test. With this one, your child with a pre-existing condition will get the care he nees if, and only if his father is Jimmy Kimmel. Otherwise, you might be screwed."
Ten years after the third-deadliest hurricane in U.S. history, we still don't know how many people died because of it. We'll never know for certain how many people died in Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath.
The problems are inherent in the confusion of disasters, especially those involving multiple states and various local, state and federal agencies.
Inquires to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response, and The Department of Health in Louisiana led U.S. News to a 2008 report as the most accurate and updated source of information. The report was years in the making as deaths were investigated and missing persons were located. In an effort to cut down on the confusion among agencies, the report reviewed all available death databases to attempt the impossible: an accurate count of Katrina's victims in Louisiana.
Although 1,833 is an often-cited mortality figure, it is older than figures in the report and none of the agencies we spoke to claimed it as an accurate estimate of the final death toll, as FiveThirtyEight also reported.
The most likely cause of death was drowning. The victims of the storm were often black and skewed older. In Orleans Parish, where 70 percent of the victims counted in the study died, the mortality rate for black adults was 1.7 times to 4 times higher than the mortality rate for white adults.
Forty percent of victims were aged 75 or older, which further complicated the process of counting victims. Many of the deceased had serious preexisting medical conditions. It's impossible to know if the person would have died from those conditions if the storm hadn't occurred or if the storm exacerbated medical conditions enough to cause death.
"If an evacuee died after a heart attack two months following the storm, was that death attributable to Katrina?" says John Ford of the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals.
The researchers confirmed 986 victims (including 15 deaths from Louisiana evacuees in other states), but called the estimate "conservative." The higher estimate for deaths in Louisiana was 1,440.
This graphic shows the conservative estimate, including the staggering impact on the elderly population. While the number of people who died in Hurricane Katrina is likely much higher, even the lower bound shows the devastating impact of a huge storm that New Orleans was ill-equipped to handle.
While the death toll in the study is 986, the total in the graphic is slightly lower because it doesn't include the 15 deaths from other states or the 22 deaths for which age information was not available.
GOP SENATORS PUSHED "REPEAL OBAMACARE" AGENDA TO WIN CONGRESS & WHITE HOUSE.
NOW THEY DON'T WANT TO KEEP THEIR VOWS.
REPLACING OBAMACARE WITH TRUE UNIVERSAL AFFORDABLE HEALTH CARE IS NOT IMPOSSIBLE.
IT JUST REQUIRES HARD WORK AND WORKING TOGETHER FOR THE AMERICAN PEOPLE WHO ELECTED THEM.
Sources: AP, Fox News, The Hill, Youtube
**** Trump plays hardball on ObamaCare repeal
President Trump on Wednesday admonished Republican senators over their stalled healthcare push and demanded they resume work on a bill to repeal and replace ObamaCare, setting up a last-ditch attempt to avoid an embarrassing defeat.
Trump invited Republican senators to the White House for lunch a day after their healthcare legislation appeared dead, telling lawmakers they should not leave Washington before reaching a solution, even if it means scrapping their already-delayed August recess.
"Frankly, I don't think we should leave town unless we have a health insurance plan," the president said at the start of the lunch in the State Dining Room. "Because we're close; we're very close."
The president's public tongue-lashing appeared to produce results. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said after the luncheon that he would forge ahead with the repeal-and-replace negotiations.
"Next week, we'll be voting on the motion to proceed, and I have every expectation that we'll be able to get on the bill," McConnell told reporters on the White House driveway.
But success is far from guaranteed. Following the meeting, it wasn't immediately clear whether McConnell would move to a straight repeal of ObamaCare - something the White House had urged earlier in the week - or the repeal-and-replace bill. As of Wednesday, both measures lacked the votes necessary to advance.
The initial collapse of the repeal-and-replace plan was a major failure for both Trump and McConnell and sparked mutual recriminations on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, including complaints from senators that the president did little to sell the initiative.
Trump on Wednesday appeared hell-bent on making up for lost time. As television cameras rolled, the president personally challenged GOP senators to get on board, reminding them of their campaign promises to overturn President Obama's signature healthcare law.
He seated himself next to Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.), a vulnerable incumbent who opposed the legislation, and ticked off what he said were the benefits of the plan, promising it would stabilize individual insurance markets and lower premiums by "60 and 70 percent."
Trump made it clear that he isn't afraid to use strong-arm tactics to persuade the holdouts.
"Look, he wants to remain a senator, doesn't he?" Trump said of Heller. "I think the people of your state, which I know very well, I think they're going to appreciate what you hopefully will do."
The president added, "Any senator who votes against starting debate is really telling America that you're fine with ObamaCare."
Heller appeared to take the ribbing in stride, tilting his head back and chuckling.
"That's just President Trump being President Trump," Heller told reporters at the Capitol following the lunch.
Trump also took a swipe at Sens. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah), the two conservatives who announced their opposition to the repeal-and-replace bill Monday night, stopping it dead in its tracks.
"The other night I was surprised when I heard a couple of my friends - my friends, they really were and are. They might not be very much longer, but that's OK," he said.
While the president seemed recommitted to using the bully pulpit to advance the healthcare effort, it's unclear whether it will be enough to get wavering senators behind a bill that is deeply unpopular with the public.
Only 17 percent of Americans approve of the Senate GOP legislation, while 55 percent disapprove, according to a late June NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll. A new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll showed the measure had only 12 percent support in key counties won by Trump in 2016.
Trump's own approval rating has plummeted - down to only 36 percent in the latest Washington Post/ABC News poll - raising the possibility that vulnerable senators such as Heller will feel emboldened to ignore his pleas.
The president has offered mixed messages on healthcare, and his demand on Wednesday for a repeal-and-replace bill may have added even more confusion to the process.
Just one day earlier, he said that Republicans in Congress should simply abandon their legislative effort and "let Obamacare fail."
That came after a Monday tweet in which Trump appeared to endorse the repeal-without-replace option.
"Republicans should just REPEAL failing ObamaCare now & work on a new Healthcare Plan that will start from a clean slate. Dems will join in!" he wrote.
White House legislative director Marc Short denied that Trump's message has been inconsistent.
"I think the president has been clear that what he wants is repeal and replace," he said, adding that the president believes that if that doesn't work, "we should at least deliver on the promise to repeal."
Short said that during the lunch, "there was a general enthusiasm for recognizing that this is not something we can walk away from."
But senators acknowledged that they still face a heavy lift.
"It is ... sort of revived," Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) said of the repeal-and-replace bill.
"I think we don't have any delusions about the fact that this is going to be very hard and we still have members who are not there yet."Three top Trump administration officials - Vice President Pence, Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Seema Verma - were scheduled to meet Wednesday evening on Capitol Hill with fence-sitting GOP senators to discuss a path forward.
McConnell repeatedly refused to say if he would cancel recess to continue work on healthcare.
NORTH KOREAN CHILDREN ARE TRAINED TO HATE USA ("AMERICAN BASTARDS"):
NORTH KOREAN GOVT STARVES ITS CHILDREN AND TEACHES HATRED OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION.
THIS EXPLAINS KIM JONG UN'S GREAT DISDAIN FOR AMERICA.
REGIME CHANGE STARTS WITH THE YOUTH.
THE UNITED STATES MUST HELP TO LIBERATE NORTH KOREA'S CHILDREN (PRAY).
Sources: Newsweek, CNN, ATI, NTDTV, Youtube
*** HOW NORTH KOREAN CHILDREN ARE TAUGHT TO HATE AMERICANS
Most North Korean children have never seen an American in person. But they get an eyeful of them at a massive museum in the town of Sinchon that is devoted to educating them on U.S.-North Korean history.
It’s not baseball and apple pie here. At the ominously named Sinchon Museum of American War Atrocities, Americans are a sinister lot: scheming missionaries, marauding soldiers, and masters of torture.
This is a museum in a farming town south of Pyongyang that has been rebuilt as a mecca to anti-Americanism. All spring and summer, North Korean schoolchildren will be making field trips here to cement what is an integral part of their education: hatred of the United States military and a mission to seek revenge.
For North Koreans, the 1950–53 Korean War that pitted the North Koreans and Chinese against U.S.-led United Nations troops — known in Pyongyang as the Fatherland Liberation War — remains in full tilt. The two sides may have signed a ceasefire in 1953, but the war still looms large in the North Korean psyche.
We in the United States often call the Korean conflict the “Forgotten War.” My high school history textbook in Minnesota devoted barely a paragraph to it, and, growing up as the child of Korean immigrants, I knew almost nothing about a war my own parents survived as children. But the war is very much alive and present in North Korea, and the standoff with the United States figures prominently in their propaganda, identity, and policy.
Understanding how North Korea sees the United States is integral to divining how to change the tenor of the tense U.S.–North Korea relationship, which persistently threatens to erupt again into military conflict.
The arrival of a new president, a Republican, in Washington after eight years of a Democrat in the White House means that there is an opening for change. How best to take advantage of that opening, however, is a tricky question when 25 years of U.S. bids to negotiate with North Korea have not stopped Pyongyang from building nuclear weapons.
The North Koreans have been waiting and watching to see what the Trump administration comes up with. But Pyongyang’s patience will be limited.
In November 2008, as the Associated Press news agency’s Seoul bureau chief, I made my first trip to North Korea just weeks after Barack Obama won the U.S. presidential election. Knowing that I was a journalist, and no doubt instructed to pump me for information about the president-elect, our North Korean tour guide latched onto me and grilled me: What did Obama think about North Korea? Would he be open to meeting the leader of North Korea?
During his presidential campaign, Obama had suggested he would be open to engaging North Korea if the situation were right, an interpretation that I relayed to the North Korean guide. But just months into Obama’s presidency, North Korea launched a banned long-range rocket and followed that up by testing a nuclear device, making it difficult for the U.S. administration to do anything but lead the chorus of international condemnation of Pyongyang for its defiance of UN Security Council resolutions explicitly barring such activity.
Washington tends to look at North Korea’s behavior solely from the view of the message Pyongyang is trying to tell America. But at the time, in April 2009, Pyongyang had reason at home for staging such theatrical provocations: then-leader Kim Jong Il had emerged from a coma and had just made his first public appearance after months of speculation about his health and North Korea’s stability.
The regime needed something big to reassure the people that the republic was intact, and still feisty, and that Kim was able to defend them against the United States.
North Korea systematically uses the fear of an outside threat to spur and inspire national pride and unity. And often, that need to rally the people in order to ensure stability outweighs any advances that North Korea’s diplomats have made in repairing relations with the United States.
In December 2011, I reported exclusively that North Korea and the United States were negotiating a groundbreaking dealthat promised food and aid in exchange for a freeze of Pyongyang’s nuclear program. The news hit the wire as Kim Jong Il lay dead from a heart attack, unbeknownst to me and the rest of the world.
Kim Jong Il’s death was announced the next day as I was en route to North Korea to open the AP’s new Pyongyang bureau, a project I was told that Kim had personally approved. Some read North Korea’s willingness to allow the U.S.-based news agency into Pyongyang as a sign of new openness toward Washington.
His death, and the rise of his young son, Kim Jong Un as leader, seemed to offer another chance at changing the tone of the relationship. Two months later, on February 29, 2012, envoys from Pyongyang and Washington signed a pact on restrictions on North Korea’s missile development programs that became known as the Leap Day Deal.
But it was only a matter of weeks when, as part of celebrations marking the centenary of the birth of his late grandfather, President Kim Il Sung, North Korea launched a long-range rocket in bold defiance of the United States and their Leap Day Deal — not to mention the UN and the Security Council’s ban on rocket activity considered to be a test of missile technology.
The Obama administration eventually adopted a policy of “strategic patience” on North Korea, refusing to get riled up by Pyongyang’s rhetoric and avoiding overtures that would appear to reward bad behavior. The aim was to discourage North Korea from using provocations as a bartering chip.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Treasury Department turned the screws on the North Koreans with a series of increasingly specific sanctions aimed at thwarting its ability to build bombs and missiles and putting a financial pinch on members of the party elite.
But bomb-making materials continued to slip through China’s porous border into the country, and the missile test-launches and nuclear tests continued — at a much faster pace with Kim Jong Un in power than ever before.
During his 2016 presidential campaign, Trump suggested that he would take a very different approach on North Korea. “I would speak to him,” he told Reuters that May.
That certainly got the apparatchiks’ attention in Pyongyang.
In 1994, Kim Il Sung met with former U.S. President Jimmy Carter at the height of a nuclear crisis. And Kim Jong Il managed to sit down with Bill Clinton in 2009 when the former U.S. president flew to Pyongyang to negotiate the release of two American journalists.
However, no sitting U.S. president has held a summit with a North Korean leader, and the optics of an American head of state shaking hands with Kim Jong Un would be propaganda gold for the North Koreans. That would be the antithesis of strategic patience, and the North Koreans relished the notion. For four months, there were no missile or nuclear tests in North Korea.
Meanwhile, Trump’s campaign comments worried South Koreans, who do not want to be left out of decisions relating to the North. After all, they have the most to lose if the “thermonuclear” war that the North Koreans threaten breaks out.
Many South Koreans also bristled at Trump’s campaign characterizations of their country as a rich nation that is freeloading off the United States in trade and military support. But South Koreans were also preoccupied by political upheaval at home: a corruption investigation reaching the presidential Blue House and top corporations; months of protests in downtown Seoul; the impeachment of President Park Geun-hye; and campaigning in advance of a snap election set for early May.
Since taking office, President Trump has reaffirmed the longstanding U.S.–South Korean alliance. He has taken a tougher approach on North Korea, with his secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, saying, “All options are on the table” — including military strikes.
On April 7, Trump ordered an airstrike on a Syrian airfield, which Tillerson said was meant to send a strong message to America’s adversaries, including North Korea. That shift in attitude has won over conservatives in South Korea. However, with progressive Moon Jae-in winning the May 9 elections in a landslide, South Korea now has a leader who advocates engagement with the North.
Having a liberal government in the Blue House after nearly 10 years of a conservative administration will prompt a shift in alliances and policy across the region.
Those of us who watch North Korea knew there was a narrow window of opportunity — and that this young man who rules the nation is not a paragon of patience. When Kim vowed on New Year’s Day to perfect a ballistic missile designed to strike the mainland United States, Trump blasted back with a tweet: “Won’t happen!”
Three weeks later, the North Koreans fired off a warning salvo — a test-launch of a new intermediate-range ballistic missile — just as Trump was sitting down with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. A series of missile tests has followed, and satellite imagery suggests North Korea may be poised to detonate another nuclear device underground.
Kim Jong Un clearly is enjoying having these big guns at his disposal — and is basking in the show of strength the missiles and nuclear weapons provide. Garnering global attention is part of the strategy.
Is he truly willing to get rid of the one “treasured sword,” as state media calls the nuclear program, that has been so useful in pulling the country together? Without nuclear weapons and the pretext of defense, North Korea would have to rely on its own economy to keep the country intact.
Instead of setting the stage for improved relations, North Korea imprisoned two Americans on espionage and anti-state charges. Kim has also poured resources into amping up the propaganda against the Americans, suggesting that hatred of the United States would become an even bigger part of North Korean education and policy.
North Korea needs an enemy. The regime needs a villain for its people to hate. There is no indication that the regime will let go of that hatred anytime soon.
The museum in Sinchon is a prime example. Tucked down a street in south Hwanghae Province, the original museum was created to serve as a repository of alleged American atrocities. Plain and unassuming, the old building housing the relics was flanked by massive mosaics that hinted at the anger contained within: a grandmother in traditional dress, hair askew, shaking her fist at the “wily Americans” and calling on fellow North Koreans to seek “a thousandfold revenge.”
Inside, room after room catalogued the alleged war crimes committed by Americans, from the Presbyterian missionaries accused of seeking to brainwash Koreans with religion to the “Hitlerite” American soldiers they claim systematically tried to exterminate the townspeople in the early months of the Korean War.
Display cases offered what they called proof: some 3,000 artifacts dug up from the soil, including skulls, bones, ID cards, simple woven shoes. A 2009 book on the museum published by Pyongyang’s Foreign Languages Publishing House says that more than 35,000 people, a quarter of the county’s population, were killed during a 52-day rampage.
After a 2014 visit to Sinchon, Kim Jong Un called for an upgrade. The simple building on a grassy knoll was replaced by a palatial museum that is a veritable house of horrors, with room after room graphically bringing to life the gruesome atrocities attributed to the Americans.
The renovated museum opened in late July 2016, in time for the anniversary of the Korean War ceasefire (which the North Koreans call “Victory Day,” even though the fighting ended in a truce).
A visit there is like walking through the set of a horror movie; visitors can walk right up to the tableaus and can practically smell the blood and hear the screams.
In one tableau shown in photos published by Pyongyang’s official Korean Central News Agency in July 2016, a life-sized American soldier yanks the hair of a young Korean woman tied to a tree as another American sinks a knife into her heart. In another room, suffused in red light as though drenched with blood, American soldiers drive nails into a Korean woman’s head. Rabid glee distorts their faces.
The grisly scenes are meant to be lifelike. But are they accurate? Many in South Korea and the United States question the veracity of the claims that such killings were carried out by American troops. While the bones and personal artifacts appear genuine, on my own visits to the museum I did not see any items that directly proved or implicated American involvement.
With few, if any, formal challenges to the claims, North Korea has forged ahead in attributing the deaths to the “American imperialists.” In a 2010 North Korean book called The Sinful American Aggressors’ Imperialism of Korea , a grainy, black-and-white photo is characterized as showing one American soldier scrawling the phrase “I can’t sleep without killing” in a notebook. “The Americans are slaughterers who brutally massacred our people,” the book informs the reader over 308 pages of unattributed allegations.
“American bastards”
Throughout my visits to the Sinchon Museum, our North Korean guide repeatedly referred to Americans as miguk nom, or “American bastards.” He knew I was American, but did not even blink in using this epithet to my face in nearly every sentence he spoke.
Because I am an ethnic Korean and did not look anything like the blond scarecrows depicted on the walls of the museum, I did not appear “American” to him, and the slur was never meant to offend me. The phrase is simply so fixed in his mind that the two words are inextricable.
However, the North Koreans I met in the street loved meeting Americans. Whenever they spotted my non-Korean colleagues, the children called out, “Hello, how are you? Hello, how are you?” They were always excited to practice their English, and usually more curious than scared of the foreigners in their presence. Like children everywhere, they loved America’s cultural exports, Winnie the Pooh and Snoopy, in particular.
In my years traveling to North Korea, almost never did I hear a North Korean refer to an “American” without automatically attaching the word “bastard” to it. It was a constant reminder of the psychologically rooted hatred of the United States that remains so deeply entrenched in the North Koreans’ education, culture, and ideology — even if what they crave is a chance to sit at the table with the Americans.
COMEY NOW APPEARS TO BE A LOYAL OBAMA HOLDOVER (DIVIDED FEDERAL GOVT):
TRUMP NEEDS TO DRAIN THE SWAMP OR RISK IMPEACHMENT.
Sources: Fox News, YouTube
**** Trump's personal lawyer to file complaint after Comey testimony , source says
President Trump’s lawyer will file a complaint with the Department of Justice’s Inspector General's Office and the Senate Judiciary Committee after it was revealed Thursday that former FBI director James Comey leaked memos to a friend in order to inform the media about conversations with the president, a source told Fox News.
is not clear when the attorney, Marc Kasowitz, will file the complaint. But the move appears to show that team Trump is trying to go on the offensive after Comey’s testimony.
Kasowitz is focusing on part of the testimony where Comey said he leaked the private conversation he had with Trump in order to prompt the appointment of a special counsel to investigate Russian interference.
“I woke up in the middle of the night on Monday night, ‘cause it didn’t dawn on me originally that there might be corroboration for our conversation; there might be a tape,” Comey said. “And my judgment was I needed to get that out in the public square so I asked a friend of mine to share the content of the memo with a reporter. Didn’t do it myself for a variety of reasons but I asked him to because I thought that might prompt the appointment of a special counsel. So I asked a close friend of mine to do it.”
Daniel Richman, a Columbia University law professor and close friend of Comey, has confirmed he leaked contents of one of Comey’s memos to The New York Times. Richman served with Comey in the Southern District of New York and at the FBI.
Kasowitz said in a statement that "Comey’s excuse for this unauthorized disclosure of privileged information and appears to entirely retaliatory. We will leave it the appropriate authorities to determine whether this leaks should be investigated along with all those others being investigated."
Comey, during his testimony, accused the Trump administration of “spreading “lies, plain and simple” about him and the FBI in the aftermath of his abrupt firing last month, declaring that the administration “defamed him and more importantly the FBI.”
In that testimony he had already disclosed that Trump demanded his "loyalty" and directly pushed him to "lift the cloud" of investigation by declaring publicly the president was not the target of the FBI probe into his campaign's Russia ties.
Comey said that he declined to do so in large part because of the "duty to correct" that would be created if that situation changed. Comey also said in his written testimony that Trump, in a strange private encounter near the grandfather clock in the Oval Office, pushed him to end his investigation into former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn.
WHITE HOUSE FIRES CNN, NY TIMES, LA TIMES & POLITICO VIA BRIEFING EXCLUSION:
MAINSTREAM MEDIA LIBERAL BIAS vs TRUMP.
TRUMP WILL ALWAYS PREVAIL BECAUSE HE'S A FEARLESS NY MEDIA GENIUS.
Sources: CNN, Alex Jones, Washington Post, NY Times
****** White House blocks CNN, New York Times from press briefing hours after Trump slams media
The White House on Friday barred news outlets — including CNN, the New York Times, Politico and the Los Angeles Times — from attending an off-camera press briefing held by spokesman Sean Spicer, igniting another controversy concerning the relationship between the Trump administration and the media.
The Wall Street Journal, which did participate in the briefing, said in a statement that it was unaware of the exclusions and "had we known at the time, we would not have participated, and we will not participate in such closed briefings in the future."
The Washington Post did not have a reporter present at the time of the gaggle.
CNN's Sara Murray went on air to describe what happened:
We lined up.
We were told there was a list ahead of time, which is sort of abnormal, but we put our name on a list. And then when we went to enter, I was blocked by a White House staffer, who said we were not on the list for this gaggle today.
Now, normally, if you were going to do something like this — an extended gaggle, off camera — you would have one person from each news outlet.
As you know, we have multiple people from CNN here every day. So, if you're going to do something beyond a pool, which is sort of the smallest group of reporters that then disseminates the information, you would have one person from every news outlet.
That is not what the White House was doing today. What the White House was doing was handpicking the outlets they wanted in for this briefing.
So Breitbart, the Washington Times, the One America News Network — news outlets that maybe the White House feels are more favorable were all allowed in, whereas I was blocked from entering, Politico was blocked from entering, the New York Times, the L.A. Times. All of these news outlets were blocked from going to a gaggle.
White House Correspondents' Association President Jeff Mason called in to CNN to say the organization is “still getting information about” the decision, adding:
They clearly wanted to have a gaggle that was not on camera and was not the full press corps today. We don't object to there being briefings like that that aren't always on camera, but we have encouraged them when they want to do something like that ... [to] still do it in the press room and do it in a place where all the reporters have a chance to ask questions.
So, we've made that clear, and we're going to continue to have discussions with them about that. And we're not happy about how this happened today.
The Post's Executive Editor Marty Baron issued the following statement:
“It’s appalling that the White House would exclude news outlets like the New York Times, CNN, Politico, the Los Angeles Times, and BuzzFeed from its publicly announced briefings. This is an undemocratic path that the administration is traveling. There is nothing to be gained from the White House restricting the public’s access to information.
We are currently evaluating what our response will be if this sort of thing happens again.”
White House deputy communications director Raj Shah insisted this was all much ado about nothing.
But New York Times Executive Editor Dean Baquet declared that “nothing like this has ever happened at the White House in our long history of covering multiple administrations of different parties.”
BuzzFeed editor in chief Ben Smith, whose outlet also was excluded, added this: "While we strongly object to the White House's apparent attempt to punish news outlets whose coverage it does not like, we won't let these latest antics distract us from continuing to cover this administration fairly and aggressively."
Ben Wizner, director of the Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at the American Civil Liberties Union called the White House's move "yet another disturbing example of the Trump administration’s contempt for the vital role a free press plays in our democracy."
White House press secretary Sean Spicer himself had previously criticized the idea of limiting media access to the White House.
Two months ago, in a panel discussion, he said open access for the media is “what makes a democracy a democracy versus a dictatorship.”
recent days, the president has grown increasingly critical of what he calls the "fake news media. Hours before the limited-access gaggle, Trump devoted much of an address at the Conservative Political Action Conference to bashing the media.
“A few days ago, I called the fake news media the enemy of the people, and they are,” the president said. “They are the enemy of the people.”
Fox News anchor Bret Baier quickly discouraged gloating on the right, noting that his network's rivals showed solidarity when the Obama White House tried to freeze out Fox News eight years ago.
In 2009, the Obama administration attempted to exclude Fox News from a round of TV interviews with “pay czar” Kenneth Feinberg. Jake Tapper (then of ABC, now of CNN) stood up for one of his network's “sister organizations” during a press briefing.
“Can you explain why it's appropriate for the White House to decide that a news organization is not one?” Tapper asked Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary at the time.
Rival networks refused to conduct interviews with Feinberg unless Fox News was granted one, too.
Fox Business Network told The Post that one of its reporters, Blake Burman, also was blocked from participating in the gaggle.
Fox News chief White House correspondent John Roberts said on air that his network will join others in protesting the exclusion of certain outlets.
GOV MCCORY TO REPEAL HB2 AFTER CHARLOTTE LEADERS REPEAL LGBT BATHROOM SHARING ORDINANCE:
CHARLOTTE'S MAYOR JENNIFER ROBERTS WANTED TO HELP HILLARY BUT IT BACKFIRED.
CHARLOTTE'S POLITICALLY-MOTIVATED LGBT BATHROOM ORDINANCE WAS ONLY FORCED ON PRIVATE BUSINESSES & PRIVATE SCHOOLS NOT PUBLIC SCHOOLS.
THUS THE REASON WHY GOV MCCRORY SIGNED HB2 INTO LAW IN THE FIRST PLACE.
CHARLOTTE'S BATHROOM SHARING ORDINANCE WAS ABOUT 2016 POLITICS NOT DISCRIMINATION.
Sources: CBS News, Charlotte Observer, YouTube
****** Gov. Pat McCrory calls for special legislative session Wednesday to repeal HB2
Following a surprise move by Charlotte City Council on Monday, Republican Gov. Pat McCrory has called for a special session Wednesday to consider repeal of House Bill 2.
The governor’s statement came in a series of rapidly unfolding events that could signal an end to the nine-month drama that has catapulted North Carolina into national headlines. HB2, seen by critics as an anti-LGBT measure, prompted boycotts and cost the state millions of dollars as well as lost jobs.
Monday’s events also underscored the continuing tensions between Republican lawmakers and Democratic Gov.-elect Roy Cooper.
McCrory’s call came hours after Charlotte City Council voted 10-0, with the support of Cooper and Democratic Mayor Jennifer Roberts, to rescind the LGBT ordinance that prompted HB2.
“This sudden reversal, with little notice after the gubernatorial election has ended, sadly proves this entire issue, originated by the political left, was all about politics at the expense of Charlotte and the entire state of North Carolina,” McCrory said in a video statement.
Cooper, who lobbied for the council action, announced earlier that GOP legislative leaders had promised to repeal HB2.
“Senate Leader Phil Berger and House Speaker Tim Moore assured me that as a result of Charlotte’s vote, a special session will be called for Tuesday to repeal HB2 in full,” Cooper said in a statement. “I hope they will keep their word to me and with the help of Democrats in the legislature, HB2 will be repealed in full.”
In a joint statement of their own, Berger and Moore said politics was behind the council vote.
“Today Roy Cooper and Jennifer Roberts proved what we said was the case all along: their efforts to force men into women’s bathrooms and shower facilities was a political stunt to drive out-of-state money into the governor’s race,” the Republican leaders said. “For months, we’ve said if Charlotte would repeal its bathroom ordinance that created the problem, we would take up the repeal of HB2.”.
This is the third time such an offer has been floated.
First in May and then in September there were efforts to get the council to rescind the ordinance that extended anti-discrimination protection to the LGBT community and allowed transgender people to use the public bathroom of the gender with which they identify.
Most council members never went along with the deal.
Since then Cooper defeated McCrory in a hard-fought race that wasn’t settled until McCrory conceded Dec. 5 as a recount entered its final hours.
Late-night lobbying
Council’s Monday morning vote came after late-night lobbying by Cooper himself. He called Democratic Mayor Pro Tem Vi Lyles at 10 p.m. Sunday and Democrat Julie Eiselt a half-hour later.
He said “if we cleaned up our books, that the General Assembly was motivated to call a special session to repeal (the law), and we felt this was our best opportunity,” Eiselt told the Observer.
Cooper and others believe that the best chance to repeal HB2 is this month before new legislators take office in January.
Roberts and council members had considered a similar deal earlier in the year but had rejected it.
Roberts on Monday was in the difficult position of defending the repeal. The vote “should in no way be viewed as a compromise of our principles or commitment to nondiscrimination,” she said.
But earlier this year, and as recently as last week, the mayor said that LGBT rights weren’t negotiable. Local and national gay rights organizations had adamantly opposed a symbolic repeal vote. The Human Rights Campaign said earlier this month that there should be no compromise between the city and the state.
But Monday they applauded the city’s move.
“HB2 is precisely why North Carolinians went to the polls and ousted Gov. McCrory last month,” said HRC President Chad Griffin. “It’s time for state lawmakers to repeal HB2 and begin repairing the harm this bill has done to people and the damage it has done to North Carolina’s reputation and economy.”
State Rep. Chris Sgro, a Guilford County Democrat who is president of Equality NC, said earlier this month that he opposed any compromise.
“I firmly believe that Roy Cooper, Jennifer Roberts and the majority of City Council are committed to winning the full complement (of rights) for LGBT people both in Charlotte and across the state,” he said Monday. “All eyes …are on Raleigh watching for the General Assembly to do the right thing.”
Republican council member Kenny Smith, who is considering running for mayor, said the Democratic-controlled council was “playing politics” with the decision. He said the same deal has been available for months, but that council members waited until McCrory lost the election.
State GOP Chairman Robin Hayes agreed. He said the Charlotte ordinance was “never more than a nakedly partisan political weapon aimed at sabotaging Gov. McCrory’s re-election bid, while inflicting economic suffering on the people of North Carolina.”
It’s unclear how a vote to repeal HB2 would go. Democratic votes are virtually assured. Many Republicans remain in support of the bill.
“Lawmakers shouldn’t now betray those who supported them and compromise common sense principles, like privacy, dignity, and freedom for all citizens,” Tami Fitzgerald, executive director of the N.C. Values Coalition, said. “To do so would be to advance the Obama administration’s agenda, not freedom and common sense.”
A ‘reset’
The city’s repeal includes language that says its nondiscrimination ordinance will be revived if the General Assembly doesn’t repeal HB2 by Dec. 31.
Republican council member Ed Driggs said he’s worried legislators will see that deadline as Charlotte dictating to Raleigh. He proposed that the Dec. 31 deadline be removed, but his motion failed.
Some business leaders were surprised but happy at the news. Maxwell Hanks, a broker with Spectrum Properties leasing the new 300 South Tryon office building, said HB2 has been hurting business recruitment in the state
“Rescinding HB2 will be a great way to close out 2016 and start 2017,” said Hanks. He said the move would be a “reset,” and that it would help him and other brokers lure companies to move to the state.
There was no advance notice that the ordinance would be discussed at the City Council meeting. The city charter allows the manager or mayor to place any item on the agenda – even without public notice first. Democrat James Mitchell made the motion to vote on the matter and Smith seconded.
Roberts said voters’ feelings about the issue have been known and voiced. But when the issue was last discussed, many in the LGBT community urged the city not to repeal the ordinance.
“The community always has a chance to weigh in,” Roberts said. “There will be much more conversations about equality.”
Lyles said council members would try in 2017 to pass some LGBT protections, though it’s unclear what they would be.
It’s possible the state might allow Charlotte to pass legal protections for gay and lesbian individuals in places of public accommodation, but any new ordinance that allowed transgender people to use the bathroom that matches their gender identity would likely be rejected again by legislators.
Some Democratic council members have long said they don’t want to “leave the transgender community behind.” But if there are future protections, the city will likely be forced to do just that.
Democratic council member John Autry said Monday’s vote turned his stomach. But he said he decided to support the compromise after talking with one of his daughters, who is gay.
He said she told him that the city’s vote was the best thing to do “in the long run.”
Democratic council member Patsy Kinsey didn’t attend the meeting.
A special session on Wednesday would come five days after lawmakers completed another special session in which they passed measures taking away many of the new governor’s appointment powers.
By itself, Charlotte’s move will not have any immediate impact on the status of lawsuits against HB2 by the federal government and the American Civil Liberties Union, among other groups.
UNC law professor Maxine Eichner, an expert in LGBT matters, said if the General Assembly follows through with the removal of HB2, the opposing sides in the court fights could both ask that the cases be dropped. Or the courts could rule that the lawsuits are now moot.
ELITE DEMS TRYING TO FORCE ELECTORS TO SUPPORT HILLARY IS EXACTLY WHY SHE LOST NOV 8:
RUSSIA DIDN'T HELP ELECT TRUMP, IT WAS AMERICAN VOTERS.
INCLUDING MANY BLACK VOTERS WHO WERE SICK & TIRED OF GOV'T CORRUPTION, UNEMPLOYMENT, INTIMIDATION AND POLITICAL CORRECTNESS.
Sources: Fox News, Daily Dot, Jim Beckwith, YouTube
Russia didn't help elect Trump.
It was American people who were tired of gov't Corruption and Propaganda from MSM.
The American people made their choice of whom they TRUST to lead our nation Nov 8, 2016.
Thus Trump's victory was legit!
This includes many, many BLACK people who publicly stated they were supporting HILLARY due to Fear but instead voted for Trump.
Black voters who publicly declared their support for Trump or any GOP candidates were Blacklisted & Punished. So they hid it until Nov 8.
Everyone and their Mother knew Trump had a 99% chance of winning but many were FORCED into believing LIES from MSM.
The only "FAKE NEWS" is Propaganda reported as "Factual" from MSM networks heavily funded by Obama Admin & Congress.
Elite DEMOCRATS trying to FORCE electors into flipping their support from Trump to Hillary is exactly why she LOST!
American voters who were sick & tired of Gov't Corruption, Intimidation, Unemployment,
Civil Liberties stripped supported Trump.
Trump's Team of Rivals shows STRONG Leadership. It also reveals Trump doesn't want to surround himself with "Yes men" and butt kissers.
--------------------------------------------
****** Eric Bolling: 'Russia Didn't Elect Trump, America Did'
Saturday on Cashin' In, host Eric Bolling fired back at critics of President-elect Donald Trump who have questioned the legitimacy of his election victory.
Bolling listed the sequence of reasons that have been given to doubt Trump's election, from allegations of interference against FBI Director Jim Comey, to voter fraud in the Rust Belt, to Russian hacking.
He said the House Intelligence Committee canceled a closed-door meeting with electors after the CIA refused to make an official available to brief them on any evidence linked to Russia.
He questioned whether the agency found new evidence that absolves Moscow of any involvement, and cited a recent Fox News Poll that said 59 percent of voters thought Russia was not involved.
"The Russians didn't elect Donald Trump, America did," he said.
RUSSIAN CYBER ATTACKS - DEMS' NEW EXCUSE FOR HILLARY'S 2016 LOSS:
IT WASN'T RUSSIA BUT THE NSA & DHS.
HILLARY LOST BECAUSE NOT EVEN THE FEDS TRUST HER.
HILLARY LOST DUE TO BLUE COLLAR WHITE VOTERS & MANY LONG-TERM UNEMPLOYED BLACK VOTERS CASTING BALLOTS FOR TRUMP.
Sources: Fox News, Sean Hannity, Alex Jones, Gateway Pundit, Youtube
***** Judge Napolitano Says It Was The NSA, Not The Russians Who Hacked DNC
Back in August, Judge Napolitano made some comments regarding the DNC hack.
On his show “Judge Napolitano’s Chambers”, Judge Nap shared his own thoughts on the leaked DNC emails:
The DNC and Clinton campaign decided to blame of all people, the Russians! They accused Vlademir Putin of being in cahoots with Donald Trump and having his intelligence services hack the DNC to expose e-mails to make Mrs. Clinton look bad and thereby benefit Donald Trump. But the Russians had nothing to do with it.
….a former high ranking NSA official who developed a software that the NSA now uses said the NSA hacked the DNC…the members of the intelligence community simply do not want Hillary Clinton to be President of the United States because she doesn’t know how to handle State secrets.
The left has been beating this ‘Russian drum’ for several months now. Russian hacking is one of the many false narratives that the left has been pushing in order to deny President Elect Trump his fully earned legitimacy.
In order to keep the Marxist agenda alive, the left must continue to foment civil unrest and division. The leftists need to get used to the new Republican party because the days of capitulating are over.
-----------------------------------------------
****** REPORT: FBI Director Comey Tells Trump That Russians Didn't Influence the Election
FBI Director James Comey has informed President-elect Donald Trump that there is "no credible evidence that Russia influenced the outcome of the recent U.S. presidential election by hacking the Democratic National Committee and the e-mails of John Podesta, the chairman of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign" according to a report from author and journalist Ed Klein.
Citing sources who were briefed on Comey’s conversations with Trump, Klein reports that Comey said that the only member of the U.S. intelligence community who was ready to assert that the Russians sanctioned the hacking was Director of the Central Intelligence Agency John Brennan, who "takes his marching orders from President Obama."
"In Comey’s view, the leaks to the New York Times and The Washington Post alleging that the Russians tried—and perhaps even succeeded—in tilting the election to Trump were a Democratic Party effort to delegitimize Trump’s victory," Klein writes.
If Klein's reporting is accurate, this would be a powerful blow to the current left-wing narrative that the Russian government intervened on behalf of the President-elect during the 2016 presidential election
MAINSTREAM MEDIA PUNDITS WERE NOT ABLE TO STEAL THIS ELECTION FOR DEMS.
THE VOTERS & ELECTORAL COLLEGE GAVE TRUMP HIS VICTORY.
Sources: NY Post, National Review, Bravo, YouTube
Exactly one week after Donald Trump was elected by the people, as our nation's 45th US President, Democrats and angry Hillary supporters are still scratching their heads in awe, wondering "HOW did this happen?"
Due to low voter turn out from Black voters who have historically supported Democrat presidential candidates, the Mainstream Media has tried to blame Hillary's defeat on Black voters.
However this synopsis couldn't be further from the truth.
In reality Trump's victory is due Mainstream Media BIAS against Trump during this campaign season.
In essence, the Media's ploy to demonize Trump
while building up Hillary backfired.
Thus today instead of praising a President Hillary Clinton, we are applauding President Donald J. Trump.
As NeNe Leakes once told her RHOA castmate Phaedra Parks "You never can win when you are dirty honey!"
TONYA TKO DELETES HER DISPLACEMENT DIARIES VIDEOS; HIDING HER SCAM Sources: Stupidity Exodus, YouTube
After apparently scamming her YouTube Channel supporters out of $12,000 via an GoFundMe account, Vlogger TONYA TKO has removed all "Displacement Diaries" videos and marked them as PRIVATE.
Is this a further indication of Guilt?
I think so.
What TONYA TKO did out of blatant Selfishness, will no doubt make it more difficult for other BLACK YouTube Vloggers who wish to raise money online for LEGITIMATE causes.
TRUMP EXPOSES MICHELLE FIELDS-COREY LEWANDOWSKI ASSAULT HOAX: RUINING A MAN'S LIFE & FAMILY FOR DIRTY POLITICS.
MORE ANTI-TRUMP MEDIA THEATRICS
Sources: Daily Mail, WND, Danger & Play, YouTube
Michelle Joann Fields is a very talented, ambitious journalist well-known within the Conservative Media community.
So why did she recently throw Donald Trump's campaign manager Corey Lewandowski under the bus by falsely claiming he assaulted her at a Trump rally when raw uncut video footage shows no clear signs of any assault?
Why did Michelle's story line change after the video footage was released?
Is the Florida Prosecutor (Aronberg) who chose to proceed with charging criminal charges against Corey a Clinton operative?
Has anyone made an offer to Michelle she can't refuse in exchange for helping to stop the Trump Political movement so he can't clinch the GOP nomination in July?
A few years ago, I was punched in the head three times at the British Press Awards in London.
My assailant was a man named Jeremy Clarkson, then presenter of global TV car show Top Gear.
He was severely intoxicated and very, very angry at a story about his personal life which had appeared in the newspaper I ran at the time.
The third flailing blow crashed into my temple, gouging a small hole from which blood flowed profusely.
At this point, I considered my options.
a) Hit him back.
b) Go home.
c) Call the police to press charges, then phone my lawyer to sue Clarkson.
If I’d gone for option c) then I suspect he’d have been convicted of assault and I’d have ended up with a truck load of cash too.
There were, after all, about 1000 witnesses, all of whom were journalists (which is why I didn’t hit him back..).
But I concluded that on balance, I probably deserved my pummelling and so instead, I stumbled outside and caught a taxi home.
(Clarkson, ironically, was fired from Top Gear last year for punching one of his producers in the head after he failed to provide him with hot food)
My point in retelling this anecdote is that journalism’s a rough old game, and the people – male and female - who choose it for a profession tend to be fairly rough too.
‘News,’ as the great press baron Lord Northcliffe once observed, ‘is something someone somewhere doesn’t want printed.’
Gathering news is thus a precarious pursuit which often requires reporters to work in very difficult, dangerous conditions.
This morning I woke in Los Angeles to breaking news that Donald Trump’s campaign manager Corey Lewandowski had been arrested and charged with ‘battery’ over an incident with a female reporter, Michelle Fields.
His alleged crime was to assault Ms Fields as she attempted to interview Trump when he walked away from a news conference in Florida.
Helpfully, the police issued new video of the ‘clash’, illustrating very clearly exactly what happened.
The footage lasts just a few seconds and shows Ms Fields displaying commendable bravura as she approaches Trump to fire questions at him.
Crucially, DailyMail.com has now established from a member of Trump’s Secret Service detail that in the process, she touched Trump twice and was warned by agents to stop.
Lewandowski, walking a few steps behind his boss, saw this happening (he may well have heard the warnings too) and raced forward to prevent her asking more questions and put himself between Trump and the reporter.
At this point, let’s forget the gender of the journalist.
In this glorious age of equality, it shouldn’t matter – right?
Battery is battery – regardless of the sex of the victim.
Lewandowski can be seen putting his arm up to block the journalist. In doing so, he also appears to grab her arm for less than a second as he moves on.
This is all rather different from what Ms Fields herself claimed had happened when she wrote about it for her then employer, Breitbart.com: ‘I was jolted backwards. Someone had grabbed me tightly by the arm and yanked me down. I almost fell to the ground but was able to maintain my balance. Nevertheless I was shaken. Campaign managers aren’t supposed to try to forcefully throw reporters to the ground.’
Oh puh-lease.
I’ve watched the video multiple times and cannot conceive any sensible interpretation that he is committing any kind of deliberate assault.
Part of Lewandowski’s job is to protect Trump from nosey journalists, and that’s exactly what he’s doing.
Fields, let me also be very clear, was also doing her job and if I were her editor, I’d congratulate her on getting so close to her prey, especially as repeatedly touching a presidential front-runner in public when he’s surrounded by Secret Service agents is a very risky thing to do.
But my fulsome praise would very rapidly be replaced by utter incredulity if she then informed me she was going to press charges against Lewandowski for battery.
Particularly given that battery, according to the law, means ‘intentionally touching someone without that person’s will’ – the very same thing we now know Fields did to Trump.
This doesn’t mean I take violence against women lightly. But there has to be some kind of harmful intent surely?
Lewandowski wasn’t trying to hurt Michelle Fields, he was trying to stop her getting to Donald Trump. If one of the Secret Service agents had done it, as they had every right to do given her behaviour, they’d have been applauded for doing their job.
Like every journalist I know, I’ve spent much of my career being pushed, shoved, elbowed and barged in crowded places when trying to get near famous people.
It goes with the territory.
Just as for that special breed of journalists who work in war zones, daily life can include dodging bullets, bombs and grenades.
Some of the toughest journalists in America are women.
Would Barbara Walters, Katie Couric or Diane Sawyer have pressed charges if they’d been in Ms Fields’ position?
Of course they wouldn’t.
They’d have all brushed off Lewandowski’s obstruction and chased back after Trump to try and fire more questions at him.
That’s what real reporters do. They don’t take no for an answer.
It’s hard therefore not to escape the sad conclusion that Ms Fields is hell-bent on having her 15 seconds of fame by turning a very innocuous incident into a national scandal to deliberately embarrass and damage a presidential candidate.
After I tweeted about this today, and had the audacity to suggest Ms Fields was being a big wuss, I was instantly bombarded with vicious abuse – notably from other high profile online journalists.
Olivia Nuzzi, a noisy feminist from the Daily Beast led the way with this simple entreaty: ‘Please go f**k yourself.’
Ben Shapiro, a whiny little brat who quit Breitbart over the way they supposedly failed to defend his colleague, was racist: ‘Go screw yourself you prissy sexist Brit.’
Whilst Simon Maloy, an aesthetically displeasing toad from Salon.com, preferred body-shaming me by saying I was a ‘dough-looking, can’t-tell-where-the-neck-stops-and-chin-starts fop.’
Whatever.
Like I said, journalism’s a rough old game. You dish it out, you have to take it.
But this debate boils down to this: if a male reporter cried ‘battery’ after such a trivial incident, he’d be an absolute laughing stock.
Why should a female reporter be taken any more seriously?
By making such a grotesque mountain of such a tiny molehill, Michelle Fields has embarrassed herself and let down her profession.
Toughen up, young lady – or choose a different job.
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