Chris Christie just wrote a telling piece for Politico about how Jared Kushner derailed plans for the former NJ governor to run Trump’s presidential transition team. Turns out it was what the speculation had assumed. Kushner held a major grudge against Christie’s role as prosecutor of his father, Charles Kushner, who went to prison in 2005 for illegal campaign contributions, tax evasion and witness tampering.
Christie — I’d been around politics long enough to grasp what was happening. Jared was trying — and not so subtly — to derail my appointment as transition chairman. The issue wasn’t the rushing. The issue was the guy. Donald didn’t sound as convinced as Jared did.
“Jared,” he said, “why would we have to wait on this? It’s going to be a great announcement for him and a great announcement for us.”
Jared let a beat pass before he spoke up. But when he started talking, he sounded like a person who’d been holding poison inside himself for a very long time. “You really want to know why?” Jared asked.
“Yeah,” Trump said.
“Because I don’t trust him to have this, and you know why I don’t trust him to have it.”
“He tried to destroy my father.”
trying to set the record straight, from the guardian (only two sides of a three sided story – just who are and who funds group called the Black Hebrew Israelites? perchance another one of those Russian attempts to cause disfunction by fomenting racial/religious hatred?):
Kentucky teenager denies mocking Native American veteran
[…]
But Sandmann, whose statement was tweeted by CNN anchor Jake Tapper late on Sunday, insisted the video was misinterpreted, leading to “outright lies being spread about my family and me.”
He denied acting with any disrespect towards Phillips.
According to Sandmann, his group was waiting on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial for their bus back to Kentucky when four African American protesters nearby began shouting racially charged insults at them.
With permission from their teacher chaperones, the students responded by shouting “school spirit” chants to “drown out the hateful comments” directed at them.
In the midst of this interaction, Sandmann said, he noticed that a Native American protester, since identified as Phillips, “began playing his drum as he waded into the crowd, which parted for him.”
“He locked eyes with me and approached me, coming within inches of my face. He played his drum the entire time he was in my face,” Sandmann said.
“I never interacted with this protester. I did not speak to him. I did not make any hand gestures or other aggressive moves,” Sandmann wrote, adding that he was “startled and confused” as to why Phillips approached him.
Sandmann said he reasoned that by remaining “motionless and calm” he hoped to defuse the situation.
Phillips said he was trying to keep peace between the Kentucky high school students and a black religious group that was also on the National Mall on Friday.
“Something caused me to put myself between (them) – it was black and white,” said Phillips. “What I saw was my country being torn apart. I couldn’t stand by and let that happen.”
In a video, 64-year-old Phillips, an elder of Nebraska’s Omaha tribe, wiped away tears as he described the incident.
Other videos also showed members of the religious group, who appear to be affiliated with the Black Hebrew Israelite movement, yelling disparaging and profane insults at the students, who taunt them in return. Video also shows the Native Americans being insulted by the small religious group as well.
The US Park Police, who have authority for security on the Mall, were not taking calls from media during the partial government shutdown.
In a joint statement , the Roman Catholic Diocese of Covington and Covington Catholic High School apologized and said they were investigating and will take “appropriate action, up to and including expulsion.”
“We extend our deepest apologies to Mr Phillips,” the diocese statement read. “This behavior is opposed to the Church’s teachings on the dignity and respect of the human person.”
Smug little puke. There was nothing in his sneering obstinace that did anything but show disrespect. And his asshole buddies weren’t chanting school spirit. They were cheering and egging him on.
huffpo on another new book:
A new tell-all by an ex-White House staffer hits the shelves at the end of the month promising juicy details from inside President Donald Trump’s administration.
One of those is his reported fixation on cable news chyrons, the all-caps banners that blare from from the bottom of TV screens.
The account of the president’s obsession is told in “Team of Vipers” by Cliff Sims, a former communications employee and Trump ally.
According to Axios, which previewed the book, Trump allegedly had staffers assemble printed pages of the chyrons for review after his televised speeches.
[and from that axios story mentioned and linked above]:
Since Axios revealed the first excerpt from Sims’ book, there has been rising curiosity and anxiety inside the White House.
“Team of Vipers” includes behind-the-scenes revelations — some comical, some troubling — about a range of Trump insiders, including some still in the West Wing.
A publishing source said Sims and others involved in the book have been peppered with incoming queries from aides who want to know how they’re portrayed. “They know he has the goods,” the source said.
The book is chockablock with glimpses of a world where Trump sees himself as star, writer, producer, director, audience and critic — all at once:
pogo, agree, but bigger story is who are the Black Hebrew Israelites and who put them up to trying to cause a riot during the shutdown?
That smug kid immediately reminded me of something virtually every mother has said at some point. “Don’t look at me in that tone of voice!!”
The chaperones gave them permission , nuff said, Total irresponsible behavior by the adults in charge.
Jack
speaking of smug disrespect, sure wish the dem 2020 wannabes in the senate would shut up during the shutdown. especially gillibrand. if they gotta say something, say it to mitch. on the floor. must be someway to use senate rules to force some votes.
here’s another book review in the guardian:
Team of Vipers review: Conway and Kelly bitten in loyalist tell-all
Cliff Sims, a former aide in Donald Trump’s White House, reportedly received a seven-figure advance for dishing dirt on his ex-boss. If Sims actually banked a million dollars, his agent deserves a round of props. As for Sims’ publishers, they may have overpaid.
A copy of Team of Vipers, Sims’ touted tell-all, was obtained by the Guardian. It ladles out scoop but is short on insight. The author is critical of Trump world’s visceral brutality but does not adequately trace the mien and tenor of the West Wing to its occupant-in-chief. In his closing pages, Sims takes Trump to task for treating loyalty as a one-way street. The reader is left wondering what took so long for the scales to fall from Sims’ eyes.
To be sure, the book is Sims’ consolation prize after departing what has become an island of misfit toys. He left the administration after being passed over for a promotion and blocked from moving to the state department, and not obtaining a security clearance. All in 500 days. Chaotic is an understatement.
Apparently, Sims got into hot water after having allegedly surreptitiously recorded a meeting with the president, which he then reportedly replayed to others. To compound Sims’ woes, the story made it into the New York Times. For the record, Sims characterizes the Times report as an “outlandish misrepresentation of what actually happened”.
Despite being a lower-level staffer he made more than his fair share of enemies, particularly John Kelly, the former chief of staff and retired four-star marine general. Suffice to say, there is no love lost.
[…]
No matter. Sims vividly captures his peers’ and superiors’ shortcomings, with only Javanka and Hope Hicks, former communications director and Porter love interest, emerging unscathed. For the rest, Sims is unsparing, with deceit and backstabbing emerging as the intertwined coins of the realm.
Sarah Sanders, Trump’s press secretary, possessed a casual attitude toward truth-telling when it came to the press, according to the book. In Sims’ words, Sanders “didn’t press as hard as she could have for the rock-bottom truth”, adding that her “gymnastics with the truth would tax even the nimblest of prevaricators, and Sanders was not that”. At least Sims believes that Sanders was not a “natural liar”.
Likewise, Kellyanne Conway, the high priestess of “alternative facts”, comes in for her share of incoming. Sims spills the beans on Conway repeatedly trashing Jared Kushner, Reince Priebus, Steve Bannon and Sean Spicer to the mainstream media, while recounting to the press ostensibly private conversations with the president.
While none of this is exactly news, it places Conway in the realm of performance artists. Think Roger Stone, without the special counsel breathing down her neck, a Nixon tattoo on her back or an organic attachment to the president. Who can forget Conway’s visual perorations on the word “collusion”? As Sims put it, “Kellyanne stood in a class of own in terms of her machinations – I had to admire her sheer gall.”
[…]
What is most memorable about Team of Vipers is the joylessness of working for this president and the acrid aftertaste it leaves. While factionalism is to be expected, a stint at the White House usually brings with it a passel of friends and memories. Just look at the recent funeral of George HW Bush.
Not here. Rather, discord and a book are Trump’s emerging legacy and Sims’ parting gifts.
Hey Jared…. your father is a jack booted thug… you are a cupcake… so suck it up!
Jack… I really thought the Chiefs would win when they managed to tie the game with only 32 seconds left. Mahomes is the real deal. I look forward to seeing him win Super Bowls in the future.
This morning I did a thorough web search on Mahomes. Despite every indication to the contrary, he is indeed an Earthling. Such a game!
Wow an amazing game — lost on the coin toss. It doesn’t seem quite fair.
Jared Kushner’s father is a thug – he hired a woman to seduce his brother-in-law and used it to blackmail him and eventually told his sister anyway.
I hope once they are gone never to hear about anything SFB again
raw story:
Michael Cohen threatened CNBC in 2014 that Donald Trump, then just a real estate tycoon, would sue the financial news network after results of a poll in which Trump fared poorly were published, The Wall Street Journal reports.
The online poll, a ranking to determine a list of the country’s top business leaders, came to light again last week when it was revealed Cohen paid a Liberty University vice president thousands of dollars to try to rig it, so Trump would win.
After the poll was over, Trump did not even make the list.
“Mr. Cohen called CNBC and threatened that Mr. Trump would sue over his poor standing in the ranking, arguing that the news channel was ‘ignoring the will of the people,’ the people familiar with the matter said. CNBC didn’t respond to the threat,” the Journal notes, and Trump never sued.
Cohen reportedly offered Liberty University’s Chief Information Officer and Vice President of Analytics, John Gauger, $50,000 to manipulate the poll. According to a Wall Street Journal report, Cohen instead handed Gauger “a blue Walmart bag containing between $12,000 and $13,000 in cash and, randomly, a boxing glove.”
Liberty University, which is headed by one of the first top evangelical leaders to endorse Trump, Jerry Falwell, Jr., defended Gauger last week.
After Trump fared poorly in the poll, he denounced it on Twitter:
Other worthy people were taken off the @CNBC list as well. Stupid poll should be canceled—no credibility.
47
11:24 AM – Mar 10, 2014
Black Hebrew Israelites might be any of a dozen or so legitimate congregations, possibly legit movements, or criminal cults originating from a common source, and riven by theology, tone, and in some cases, greed, hatred, and pride. Which type of Black Hebrew Israelites were these ?
Young Sandmann may have been mocking, but he was non-violent. I suspect that many of Gandhi’s followers smiled mockingly at the British police while going to make salt.
I noticed that I wasn’t on the list of top businessmen in the CNBC poll, and neither were Solar or nor Julia. I could understand leaving Tiptoe or our Ozzie friend out, but ME ???
It violates the WILL OF THE GODS !
And, where’s Whitey Bulger’s name ?
Gotta wonder who has enough power in the WH to send out a coherent tweet about MLK day AND get SFB and his freak veep to go to the MLK monument and toss out some flowers without saying anything stupid?
Now the purifying teams need to go over and make sure the grounds are clean again.
It is nasty bitter outside today. I am so sorry for all who wanted to have a nice MLK day in D.C. It is too cold out to do much of anything outdoorsie. So I will attempt to be domestic and do some time honored D.C. project like shredding of documents. That will keep me busy for a while.
I rooted for the Patriots after all. As you say RR many super bowls to come for Mahomes but who knows about Brady. As CNN’s Jeff Berman said this morning, “The Patriots are going to the Super Bowl, and that only happens once a year.”
patd,
The BHI slant might be more important ultimately, but the young Kentucky prick is decidedly a bigger story – at least all the MSM outlets seem to think it is.
That is a great quote from Berman.
The Black Israelites have been around for years, patd. I used to see members yelling at and harrassing people on the streets of NYC every time i’d visit- it’s their schtick.
I’m sure you can find some very entertaining videos produced by self-ascribed members on Youtube- they were into wacky conspiracy shit before wacky conspiracy shit was cool, to their credit?
Yeah, you gotta take off that tin-foil, patd. It’s just a loosely affiliated group of disenfranchised and mentally ill people with nothing better to do that stand around high traffic areas and harrass people in major metro areas.
(This was in response to your 12:15, why it posted before that comment i don’t know. Maybe ‘cuz the earth is flat)
x-r, i’m not questioning the authenticity or existence of the religious groups called Black Hebrew Israelites, am questioning specifically who those 4 men were who id’d themselves as such.
also questioning who may have sent them there pre-planning an incident during the shutdown. remember the reporting from CNN sept 2017:
pogo, they say when it comes to pricks, bigger doesn’t matter 🙂
The magazine’s latest cover is by the artist John Cuneo, who last year depicted the President enjoying a day of golfing in the swamp. “When it comes to drawing Trump, I’ve kind of hit the wall myself,” Cuneo said. “Half of a face is more than enough.” Cuneo’s image nods to a magazine cover from another era—the drawing, by Boris Artzybasheff, for the August 31, 1962, issue of Time—though the subject, of course, is the ongoing government shutdown, which is now the longest one in history.
Here’s a 2015 photo of a Covington Catholic basketball game where students are clad in blackface and one of them is harassing a black player. Covington’s student body is 100% white, their entire faculty is 100% white, but they feel entitled to dress in blackface, call themselves ‘The Crazies’ and intimidate black youth. If that sounds more like the KKK to you than any high school basketball team, that’s because you’re right. The Covington bullies and their families are the face of Trump’s American Nazi movement–$10,000 tuition, parents all work in white collar jobs. Don’t believe a word of their PR spin, these kids are monsters.
On a day that MLK’s legacy should be remembered and celebrated, Max Boot posted an article that stands in stark contrast – It was subtitled The Days of Whine and Poses at WaPo.
While there are certainly more appropriate posts out there more in keeping with the spirit of the man this day is named for, time does march on and we are still faced with very un-King like “leadership”. Thaks for reminding us, Max.
Anyone who has spent too much time using the awful news portal that is Yahoo might remember a particularly terrible sports-writer that worked there years ago, named Chris Chase. His assertions were so consistently ridiculous, i began to surmise that he might have been a provocateur for its own sake, or to generate “clicks” for his website (it worked). As a result of his writing, he was constantly and mercilessly mocked by commenters on Yahoo (commenters of a purer sort than the modern day Russian and Republican trolls and plants that infest Yahoo, today), and Chase became a sort of icon of bad journalism in the internet age- you know, before bad journalism on the internet was cool- i suppose you could say he was a trailblazer that way. Bear in mind, though, that he wrote about sports, and anyone who takes sports journalism too seriously has a bigger issue than the worst writer to cover it, so it was all light fare, and not really an affront to anyone. He was just a guy trying to generate buzz and make a living for himself on what was at that time an emerging platform.
Well, i found out yesterday after googling his name on a whim (i had just read a poorly written article about that football game, last night, and it reminded me of him) that he died at age 37 of pancreatic cancer, leaving behind a wife very young daughter. Very sad.
Chris Chase, you were among the worst journalists i’ve ever read, but seemed like a decent person, and you didn’t deserve that. RIP
There’s a gofundme set-up to help support his family- i’m going to throw a couple bucks into it, not that a couple bucks can replace a father…
speaking of sports writers turned journalist turned sports writer, what’s keith up to nowadays? so much of what he reported on during his resistance show has been corroborated and then some. sure do miss him.
Bink…. that’s way too young. RIP Mr. Chase.
I’ve read some of the books about SFB… but at this point…. what is the point. They all kinda corroborate the same thing… trump’s WH is chaotic… he’s dumb as a rock… he blow’s his stack… he demands loyalty while giving none… no one decent and/or smart wants to work for him… he lies… and then he lies some more… etc., etc. Too many books in my to read pile to bother with anything more about trump.
.
he’s baaack
1/18/19
patd – I follow Keith on twitter. He is mostly sports, with a rare political statement.
I left u a vid in yesterdays thread RR, here’s more- cute video on this one
Oh, you summed up Trump rather succinctly, well done you
Kamala Harris is in for 2020. So far three senators declared. Historically the toughest spring board to the presidency. Where is everyone else?
KC, wow, just WOW! David Duke would probably endorse the crazies. The WaPo article on the confrontation said that one black kid identified himself as a student there.
I’m pretty stunned about it. LP went to a Catholic school from KG on and it was predominantly white. of his 50 or so student graduating class I remember 2 black kids and an Asian girl, but aside from those 3 it was an all white. The school had a handful of black kids and a couple Asian kids, but really. for all intents it was a white school. The Principal was a white woman from Kentucky – was a cheerleader for one of the Kentucky schools – may have been UK. Our basketball coaches were 2 black men – one was a legendary WVU player and the other played at Cleveland state. Nothing like what happened in Washington or as depicted in the picture you posted would ever have been tolerated there. The stuff in the picture would have led to expulsions.
giuliani torpedoes his own flagship
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/giuliani-trump-does-not-remember-whether-trump-tower-moscow-talks-went-through-election/ar-BBSyGkY?ocid=spartanntp
Ms Pat, There are 2 or 3 Black Hebrew Israelite orgs that love everyone, and 2 or 3 that are black supremacist. The nation of Islam split off the latter movement and farrakhan finally admitted that in 2014.
These guys are probably one of the groups that hates everyone but African Americans and Caribbeans. That group also hates actual Africans, too.
There’s another that only hates Whites and Jews, but loves ‘Asians’. Apparently, white Asians are okay, maybe . . . ?
The original Black Hebrew Israelites follow Hebrew Testament law. They believe Jesus was a prophet, not the begotten son of God. They are polygamous. They also profess to loving everyone of every color, ‘cept homosexuals. I believe a couple offshoots of this group have gone over to Judaism, one to Conservative, and one to Orthodoxy. All they had to give up were the extra wives.
Mentally I am ready for this – call me an old fogy now. I am enjoying sitting in my recliner, my feet in my super-deluxe foot water bath massager and overall great feeling, bath. Because of a few service issues my VA doctors recommended I do foot baths. Those were okay, actually very nice. So I waited until the holiday season sales happened and I could buy one of the super-deluxe models. Water heating, vibrating, massaging and all sorts of other things I don’t care about. I dump in a handful of Epsom Salts and water to cover the tootsies – and sit back while watching videoes, such as how to build a Greek wooden wagon, or how to sail to wherever you want in the world. Life is good.
Speaking (metaphorically) of an actual wall/barrier/slats that probably irked trump :
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-46699807