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The Last 24 Hours of the Shitshow Trump Administration

By Dustin Rowles | Politics | January 25, 2019 |

By Dustin Rowles | Politics | January 25, 2019 |


GettyImages-644739876.jpg

Back during the early days of the Administration, the news would pile up so quickly — and each three-hour news cycle would bury the last — that we would periodically round up the last 24 hours in this shit show we call the White House.

We’re bringing it back.

— Yesterday morning, Trump woke up licking his wounds, after Nancy Pelosi canceled his State of the Union address, originally meant to be delivered on Tuesday.

— Yesterday, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross suggested that there shouldn’t be a “liquidity” problem during the shutdown and furloughed workers shouldn’t have to use food banks because they ought to be able to take out small loans, and so what if they have to pay a little interest?

— Donald Trump piggybacked upon Wilbur Ross’ statement and somehow made it worse, basically suggesting that government workers should just, you know, get credit from their grocery stores.

— Soon thereafter, the Senate voted on two proposals to reopen the government, a Republican one with full funding for the wall and a Democrat one, which would re-open the government until February 8th while Congress continued to negotiate. Both bills failed, but despite the fact that the Senate is 53-47 GOP, the Democratic bill got one more vote than the Trump bill.

— While those bills were being debated, Colorado Senator Michael Bennet destroyed Ted Cruz on the floor of the Senate.

— Weezer released an album of cover songs. It is bad. Really, really bad.

— NBC dropped a report that suggested that Jared Kushner’s White House security clearance was denied, but that some sycophantic, corrupt Trump appointee overrode career professionals and approved Kushner’s clearance, along with 29 other clearances that were initially denied. The Democratic Oversight Committee is currently investigating.

— Meanwhile, after the Senate bills failed, there was a Republican luncheon. It did not go well.

“This is your fault,” Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) told Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) at one point, according to two Republicans who attended the lunch and witnessed the exchange.

“Are you suggesting I’m enjoying this?” McConnell snapped back, according to the people who attended the lunch.

Six Republicans broke ranks to vote for the Democratic plan, which would have reopened shuttered government agencies through Feb. 8, without any wall money. Among them was Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), who explained in the lunch why he planned to vote for both bills.

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), who voted for Trump’s bill but opposed the Democratic plan, started to interrupt him and Romney snapped back, according to one of the people who attended the lunch and another person familiar with it.

— This morning, I expected the GOP meltdown over the shutdown would be the top story. Then this happened:

Those are FBI agents, working without pay, arresting Roger Stone.

Former NFL receiver Chad Johnson witnessed it!

The indictment, well, let’s just say it’s not great for the White House. It’s a seven-count indictment that accuses Stone of repeatedly lying under oath and witness tampering. For the purposes of Trump, however, it also suggests that Stone was not only in contact with the Trump administration, but that Trump himself directed senior campaign officials (likely Steve Bannon) to reach out to Roger Stone and find out if Wikileaks had any more dirt on Hillary, and that Stone had frequent communications with our old friend “Person 1.”

As for the witness tampering? Roger Stone used a Godfather II reference to basically say that the witness should feign ignorance during his Congressional testimony. From the indictment:

On multiple occasions, including on or about December 1, 2017, STONE told Person 2 that Person 2 should do a “Frank Pentangeli” before HPSCI in order to avoid contradicting STONE’s testimony. Frank Pentangeli is a character in the film The Godfather: Part II, which both STONE and Person 2 had discussed, who testifies before a congressional committee and in that testimony claims not to know critical information that he does in fact know.

— So far, Sarah Sanders is the only person from the Administration to make a statement on Stone’s indictment.

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— Meanwhile, today, government workers missed their second paycheck.

— And now, LaGuardia is halting flights.



Header Image Source: Getty Images