News
WATCH: One Day After Mueller’s Game-Changing Remarks Barr Throws Him Under the Bus
Attorney General Bill Barr has just thrown now-former Special Counsel Robert Mueller under the bus, and did so in a far less elegant and far more disrespectful manner than the former FBI Director would ever have conceived.
Mueller served under four U.S. presidents – two Republicans, and two Democrats – as FBI Director. And then under President Donald Trump as Special Counsel, investigating President Donald Trump.
On Wednesday morning, his final day in office before resigning as Special Counsel, Mueller in a surprise news conference talked to the American people for just nine minutes, permanently changing the trajectory of the Republican Party’s gaslighting. And he did so merely by reading aloud portions of his 448-page report on the Russia investigation that has been public for weeks.
On Thursday, in an interview that had been pre-arranged, and advertised barely minutes before Mueller’s news conference began, Attorney General Bill Barr threw his longtime friend and co-worker under the bus.
The Special Counsel, regardless of DOJ policy making it – as Mueller told the nation – literally “unconstitutional” to indict and therefore to even state that the President of the United States may have committed crimes, told CBS News that Mueller should have “reached a conclusion.”
Reaching a conclusion, as Barr described it, would have violated DOJ policy, but that fact did not seem to concern the Attorney General.
“I personally felt he could’ve reached a decision,” Barr told CBS News chief legal correspondent Jan Crawford during an exclusive interview taped in Anchorage, Alaska Thursday.
“The opinion says you cannot indict a president while he is in office, but he could’ve reached a decision as to whether it was criminal activity,” Barr told Crawford. “But he had his reasons for not doing it, which he explained and I am not going to, you know, argue about those reasons.”
Notice in the video Barr refers to the DOJ decades-old policy as an “opinion,” suggesting it is subject to interpretation. Legal experts disagree.
And those reasons are literally about what is and is not not just policy, but about what is and is not constitutional.
Barr also claimed that he and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein “felt it was necessary” to make decision for Mueller – rather than telling Mueller that if he did not go further they would co-opt his two years of work and turn it into a gaslighting project to protect President Trump, which they then did.
Watch:
NEW: Attorney General Barr tells @JanCBS he “personally felt” Special Counsel Robert Mueller “could’ve reached a decision” on obstruction of justice by President Trump.
More on @CBSEveningNews tonight and @CBSThisMorning Friday. #CTM pic.twitter.com/b8ik2q32ZK
— CBS This Morning (@CBSThisMorning) May 30, 2019
The full interview airs Friday morning.
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News
Trump Now Urging Florida Voters to Vote by Mail After Realizing More Democrats Are Mailing in Ballots Than Republicans
Voting by mail is safe and effective, nearly entirely free from fraud, but for months President Donald Trump has been spinning lies to get Americans to go to the polls. He’s falsely claimed mail-in voting will deliver a “rigged” and “fraudulent” election, with nothing to support the claim.
Until now.
Tuesday afternoon the President urged voters in Florida – and only Florida – to vote by mail.
Trump is clearly worried about the poll numbers that show presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden beating him in the Sunshine State by six points, and statistics that show Democrats are voting by mail more than Republicans.
Florida absentee ballot requests by party registration (8/4)
Dem 1,924,878
Rep 1,332,063
Oth 40,029
NPA 781,123Democratic advantage: +592,815 (was just ~500,000 a week ago)
Data here, ballot requests for the primary good thru Nov. election https://t.co/H513wN6BAm https://t.co/SgVQO6EtPk
— Michael McDonald (@ElectProject) August 4, 2020
No Republican has won the White House in 96 years without winning Florida.
Here’s how Trump is combatting this discrepancy in the critical state of Florida:
Whether you call it Vote by Mail or Absentee Voting, in Florida the election system is Safe and Secure, Tried and True. Florida’s Voting system has been cleaned up (we defeated Democrats attempts at change), so in Florida I encourage all to request a Ballot & Vote by Mail! #MAGA
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 4, 2020
Trump’s lie about “cleaning up the state” aside (Florida has had a Republican governor since 1999), Trump just admitted that his one claim about why voting by mail is dangerous is false.
Finally, he said there is no difference between absentee voting and voting by mail.
But Trump is still insisting just Florida, and White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany opened up her press conference minutes after Trump’s tweet (and one hour late) by attacking the New York City primary election, results from which have not been released after more than a month. She’s using it to illustrate the dangers of voting by mail.
USA Today opinion columnist Michael Stern notes yet another reason Trump just changed his tune:
Lol.
Translation: "I'm going to vote by mail in Florida so I need to carve out an exception for myself — because I will mold U.S. policy to serve my personal interests at all costs."
— Michael J. Stern (@MichaelJStern1) August 4, 2020
President Donald Trump’s Monday evening press briefing is being widely panned as a rambling diatribe of complaints and misinformation. The President had difficulty pronouncing many words, including “plasma,” as many noted.
Plausma pic.twitter.com/adZguX3Zzp
— Acyn Torabi (@Acyn) August 3, 2020
Trump also lied about the timing of any possible vaccine:
Trump again claims that a vaccine might be available "maybe far in advance of the end of the year." It is already August, and that timeline is much more optimistic than that of Fauci and other experts.
— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) August 3, 2020
And he lied about the state of the pandemic in the U.S.:
Trump ludicrously claims that "we have done as well as any nation" with the coronavirus, even though the US is worst in the world in deaths by a substantial number pic.twitter.com/QkpCN1pezM
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 3, 2020
Here’s a sampling of what many are saying:
Why does liberal @MSNBC air live, the White House Briefing Room LIES and misinformation of the RWNJ, Russian compromised conservative Republican president, Donald Trump, while the moderate @CNN does not?
Why does @MSNBC willingly air Trump's lies?
— Greg Wilson (@joke2power) August 3, 2020
"Tremendous", "Incredible", "Very Good", "Wonderful", "Great", "Very Excited", Very Quickly", "Doing Very Well", "Witch Hunt"…are these the ONLY words he knows? #TrumpPressConference pic.twitter.com/KJVqcc4j61
— Ms. G (@LadyG1228) August 3, 2020
In an attempt to finish his attempt at the worlds longest non-sequiter sentence, the president today mumbled nothing of note or value that wasn't a falsehood.#TrumpPressConference
— Cheshire Matt (@TheCheshireMatt) August 3, 2020
Dementia J. Trump: Best Words Edition https://t.co/wqxjbnCQJA
— Spiro Agnew’s Ghost (@SpiroAgnewGhost) August 3, 2020
If you're watching the #TrumpPressConference, you're simply watching a freshman class on snake oil marketing and an incoherent adaptation of the American English language.
This man knows nothing about anything besides his unrestrained id, that of a spoiled 8 year old child. pic.twitter.com/yQpSvRnG21
— No One Really💥 (@NoOneReallySays) August 3, 2020
OANN reporter asks about mail-in votes and gives him a chance to blather nonsense about imaginary lost ballots "darkness of night" and demanding a election must be re-run.
Donald Trump is mentally ill and unfit for any office.#TrumpPressConference— RufusKings1776 (@RufusKings1776) August 3, 2020
#TrumpPressConference these reporters are shirking their duty — Trump has just said like five lies in one minute about American cities and they simply move on. this is disgraceful, they're allowing him to spew his propaganda and disinformation w/ no fact checking.
— dr. salvatore j fallica (@sjf1) August 3, 2020
I normally skip the live Trump pressers but I’m watching today and this man hasn’t said one coherent thing.
— Zerlina Maxwell (@ZerlinaMaxwell) August 3, 2020
What’s the purpose of these? All they do is get me angrier at his gross incompetence and continuous spread of conspiracy theories. He thinks 156,000 dead is doing a great job. WTF? He’s senile and needs to be removed.#TrumpPressConference
— tammy albert (@Flourgrl007) August 3, 2020
President Donald Trump says he will issue an executive order as soon as Saturday to ban TikTok, the Beijing-based social media and video-sharing platform.
“As far as TikTok is concerned we’re banning them from the United States,” Trump told the press pool traveling with him to Florida on Air Force One late Friday night.
Microsoft had expressed interest in purchasing TikTok’s U.S. operations, but the pool report says the president “made clear he was not in favor of a deal to let a U.S. company buy TikTok’s American operations.”
TikTok has been accused of posing a national security threat.
Friday evening Vox’s tech site Recode noted “for established US social media giants Facebook and Google, the decision [to force a sale of TikTok] could significantly weaken their fiercest new competitor.”
Meanwhile, experts say he cannot “ban” TikTok.
Newsweek’s White House Correspondent Andrew Feinberg:
Everyone please stop just stenographically repeating @realDonaldTrump's claim that he's going to "ban TikTok."
He can't just "ban" it.
Stop being so credulous and think for a second.
— Andrew Feinberg (@AndrewFeinberg) August 1, 2020
Top national security attorney Bradley Moss also says Trump cannot ban the company:
No, Trump will not actually be able to “ban” TikTok as a functional matter, even if he can find some legal authority to do it. Get real.
— Bradley P. Moss (@BradMossEsq) August 1, 2020
Noted attorney and political commentator:
The pool report — I don’t know where in Article II or federal law he would find this authority, antiquated as it may seem to ponder such questions. pic.twitter.com/yPJaKHrAlU
— southpaw (@nycsouthpaw) August 1, 2020
Dave Jorgenson, “The Washington Post’s TikTok guy”:
I do appreciate all of the tweets, they’re hilarious.
But 1) there are so many legal issues and obstacles that will make it very hard for the President to just “ban” tiktok
2) it’s so clearly a distraction
And 3) I care so much more about people dying every day than TikTok
— Washington Post TikTok Guy (@davejorgenson) August 1, 2020
Another tech site, The Verge, in early July published an article detailing “How the Trump administration could ‘ban’ TikTok.”
This is a breaking news and developing story. This story has been updated.
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