By Dustin Rowles | Politics | August 15, 2017 |
By Dustin Rowles | Politics | August 15, 2017 |
Here’s an afternoon political briefing, because the damn news cycle is hard to keep up with. I’ll keep it brief:
— The big talk aside from Charlottesville this week is the pressure being mounted against Trump to drop the alt-right sympathizers in his administration. Democrats and Republicans are putting pressure on Trump to fire Stephen Bannon, Sebastian Gorka, and Stephen Miller; even Rupert Murdoch — head of Fox News — has asked Trump to drop Bannon. Charlottesville has only ratcheted up the heat. Meanwhile, Gorka hasn’t been seen this week (after appearing on cable news outlets frequently in recent weeks), and Stephen Bannon is apparently laying as low as possible.
I might be wrong, but I don’t think Trump fires Bannon. He’s worried that Bannon will turn the alt-right machine against him, and also, Trump doesn’t like to be told what to do, and everyone is telling him to fire Stephen Bannon. He might push Gorka out for symbolic reasons, but I think Bannon sticks around until his entire body festers into a giant moldy blood blister and he dies in a back room, hiding out from the President to avoid the axe.
steve bannon looks like the confederate statue they torn down was his second to last horcrux pic.twitter.com/MxwpoCIZ5O
— jaboukie young-white (@jaboukie) August 15, 2017
— A fourth CEO has quit the Trump economic advisory council today.
Scott Paul, president of the Alliance for American Manufacturing, quit WH manufacturing council, joining CEOs of Merck, Under Armour & Intel
— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) August 15, 2017
This tweet came a few minutes before the resignation. HA!
For every CEO that drops out of the Manufacturing Council, I have many to take their place. Grandstanders should not have gone on. JOBS!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 15, 2017
— Remember when Trump brought us to the brink of nuclear war with North Korea? When was that? 2015? 2016? LAST WEEK? Oh shit. Anyway, that situation has gone from a boil to a soft simmer now.
Thank you for finally acting presidential and de-escalating the situation, Kim Jong-unhttps://t.co/qcbjLOqf9G
— Jess Dweck (@TheDweck) August 15, 2017
— Trump, meanwhile, has been boiling since being forced to give that speech yesterday.
Since "condemning" extremism, Trump has RTed a violent cartoon, an alt-right conspiracy nut, and a TV feed saying he might pardon a racist.
— Mark Harris (@MarkHarrisNYC) August 15, 2017
— Oh, by the way, Alex Jones — who has a friend in Donald Trump — is now claiming that the white supremacists in Charlottesville were actually Jewish actors. I bet Jones is selling a lot of bone broth today.
— THIS is how irrational Trump’s hatred of Obama is:
per source, WH has confirmed they will rescind Obama order that flood-prone infrastructure be built with sea-level rise in mind
— Zack Colman (@zcolman) August 15, 2017
— This is terrifying: The DOJ has asked Dreamhost for information on all the visitors to one of the sites they host, Disruptj20.org, a Trump protest site:
“The DOJ has recently asked DreamHost to provide all information available to us about this website, its owner, and, more importantly, its visitors,” DreamHost says. That includes “1.3 million visitor IP addresses — in addition to contact information, email content, and photos of thousands of people — in an effort to determine who simply visited the website.”
— Say what you want about Democrats at the national level, at the local level, they’re fielding very good candidates these days, or at least candidates who make very good ads (this guy is actually an Independent running as a Dem, but on Staten Island? I’ll take it):
New Yorkers need a true fighter to KO the opioid epidemic. That's why I'm running for Congress in NY-11. #InBoydsCorner pic.twitter.com/9A4Ghl97n7
— Boyd Melson (@BoydMelson) August 15, 2017