1. Andy Borowitz: Trump Says He Is Only President in History with Courage to Stand Up to War Widows

Trump Says He Is Only President in History with Courage to Stand Up to War Widows

Calling himself “unbelievably brave,” Donald Trump said on Monday that he is the only President in U.S. history with the courage to stand up to war widows.

“You look at guys like Obama and Clinton and the Bushes, when it came to war widows, they all blinked,” he said. “For years, we weren’t winning at widows.”

In contrast, Trump said, he has made defeating war widows one of his top priorities as President. “Forget about Iran and China and Little Rocket Man,” he said. “This country has been pushed around by war widows for far too long.”

Trump said that Senator John McCain, who has mocked the President’s draft-dodging during Vietnam, has “never shown an ounce of courage when it comes to fighting war widows.”

ELSEWHERE: In a stirring defense of Donald Trump’s chief of staff, General John Kelly, the White House press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, said on Friday that it was “unpatriotic in the extreme” to offer irrefutable video proof that a four-star general lied.

“General Kelly has served our country with courage and valor,” she said. “He has earned the right to lie without fear of being contradicted by the facts.”

Minutes after Sanders concluded her remarks, Kelly also received a vote of confidence from Trump, who called his chief of staff “a good liar, for a beginner.”https://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/

2. These are the Facebook posts Russia used to undermine Hillary Clinton’s campaign

By meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, Moscow appears to have initially aimed to plant Donald Trump in the White House. But as signs toward the end of the campaign pointed to Trump’s defeat, actors in Russia were primarily trying to hamstring Hillary Clinton’s perceived ascension to the presidency. That theme ThinkProgress detailed earlier this week by analyzing Russia’s creation of hundreds of fake Facebook accounts, pumped via ads and promotion into Americans’ feeds.

Anti-Clinton rhetoric shone through on the “Heart of Texas” page, a Russian account that advocated for Texas secession. When the page, which was the most popular Texas secession account on Facebook, wasn’t pushing to break Texas off from the rest of the U.S., it was railing against Clinton’s campaign, policies, and personality.

One post described Clinton as “pure evil,” while another shared an obviously photoshopped picture of her shaking hands with Osama bin Laden. Another post exclaimed “Hillary for prison!”, saying that Clinton “committed so many crimes that lifelong prison sentence is the least of what she deserves [sic].” All but one of these posts were published in the run-up to the election.

Read more at https://thinkprogress.org/russia-facebook-clinton-campaign-d6d76b2a2e82/

3. Trump Campaign Staffers Pushed Russian Propaganda Days Before the Election

Kellyanne Conway and Donald Trump Jr. pushed messages from an account operated from Russia’s ‘troll farm’—including allegations of voter fraud a week before Election Day.

Some of the Trump campaign’s most prominent names and supporters, including Trump’s campaign manager, digital director, and son, pushed tweets from professional trolls paid by the Russian government in the heat of the 2016 election campaign.

The Twitter account @Ten_GOP, which called itself the “Unofficial Twitter account of Tennessee Republicans,” was operated from the Kremlin-backed “Russian troll farm,” or Internet Research Agency, a source familiar with the account confirmed with The Daily Beast.

The account’s origins in the Internet Research Agency were originally reported by the independent Russian news outlet RBC. @Ten_GOP was created on Nov. 19, 2015, and accumulated over 100 thousand followers before Twitter shut it down. The Daily Beast independently confirmed the reasons for @Ten_GOP’s account termination.

The discovery of the now-unavailable tweets presents the first evidence that several members of the Trump campaign pushed covert Russian propaganda on social media in the run-up to the 2016 election. https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-campaign-staffers-pushed-russian-propaganda-days-before-the-election

 

4. WA Post VIDEO: How Russian operatives used Facebook and Twitter during the 2016 election

http://wapo.st/2vMt7iV

5. The Trump Budget Legacy: A Permanent $1 Trillion Federal Deficit

The U.S. Treasury Department reported last Friday that the federal budget deficit for the just-completed fiscal year had risen by $80 billion over fiscal 2016 to the ominous-sounding $666 billion, a number many people think is an omen for the coming of the devil or anti-Christ.

In this case they may be right: The spending and taxing policies about to be put in place by the Trump administration and the Republican-controlled Congress will balloon the federal deficit to $1 trillion or more every year going forward. https://www.forbes.com/sites/stancollender/2017/10/22/the-trump-budget-legacy-a-permanent-1-trillion-federal-deficit/#7abaa6287a65

6. Trump pick for top environmental post called belief in global warming a 'kind of paganism'

Trump’s nominee to be the White House senior adviser for environmental policy, Kathleen Hartnett White, in 2016 described the belief in “global warming” as a “kind of paganism” for “secular elites.” 

Hartnett White, currently a senior fellow at the conservative think tank Texas Public Policy Foundation, has long expressed skepticism about established climate science and once dismissed the idea that carbon dioxide is a pollutant, calling it ‘the gas of life on this planet.'”

As head of the Council on Environmental Quality, Hartnett White would oversee environmental and energy policies across the government. http://www.cnn.com/2017/10/19/politics/kfile-kathleen-hartnett-white-paganism/index.html

7. How Trump Is Poisoning World Trade

How many poison pills does it take to kill a trade deal? Three, according to Donald Trump. Mexico and Canada are bending over backwards to preserve the North American Free Trade Agreement. But their tolerance for Mr Trump’s demands is wearing thin. It seems a matter of time before he declares America’s exit from ‘the worst trade deal ever.’ The temptation to withdraw from the World Trade Organization will grow as Mr Trump’s term wears on. Anyone who thinks he has dropped his vow to rip up the global trading system has not been paying attention.”

Such tactics are the opposite of the art-of-the-deal image Mr Trump has spun. According to that playbook, Mr Trump opens with extravagant demands that force his counterparties to improve their offers. The final deal is far better than had he begun with a realistic gambit. Yet when Mr Trump refuses to dilute his outrageous opening offer, the suspicion arises that he never wanted a deal. That, indeed, has been his approach to almost every negotiation. https://politicalwire.com/2017/10/19/trump-poisoning-world-trade/

8.Trump keeps his focus on outrage

Trump “was expected to spend the fall pushing his ambitious tax reform agenda and helping devastated regions in Texas, Florida and Puerto Rico recover from hurricanes.

Instead, over a period of three weeks, Trump has hammered the NFL into submission over the national anthem protests, repeatedly attacked the “fake news” media and now reopened a fight over his — and his predecessor’s — handling of Gold Star families.

But these seeming distractions are the president’s substance — and the legislative agenda his predecessors have approached with a singular focus is, for him, largely a diversion.

“He thinks he was elected on this stuff, this is the stuff he knows how to talk about, and this is the stuff that would make the front page of the New York Post,” said Jonah Goldberg, senior editor of National Review. “The problem is, is that the job is still the job.”  http://www.politico.com/story/2017/10/18/trump-widows-flag-anthem-243928

9. The DAILY GRILL

“We’ve seen nationalism distorted into nativism, forgotten the dynamism that immigration has always brought to America. We see a fading confidence in the value of free markets and international trade, forgetting that conflict, instability and poverty follow in the wake of protectionism. We’ve seen the return of isolationist sentiments, forgetting that American security is directly threatened by the chaos and despair of distant places.” -- George W. Bush delivering what sounded like a sustained rebuke to President Trump, decrying nationalism, protectionism and the coarsening of public debate while calling for a robust response to Russian interference in American democracy.

VERSUS

“There has not been a more destructive presidency than George Bush’s ... Bush has no earthly idea of whether he’s coming or going… just like it was when he was president.” -- Stephen Bannon responding to Former President G.W. Bush's speech in New York. https://www.apnews.com/844e89cbdf5941dd8b509228ec3cab4f/Bannon-faults-George-W.-Bush-for-'destructive'-presidency

 

 ... @BillOreilly: “Sean Hannity kicking serious butt in the ratings. Tapper on CNN as low as you can go.”

VERSUS

… @jaketapper: “‘Low’ would be sexually harassing staffers and then getting fired for it -- humiliated in front of the world. Now THAT would be low.”

 

"A congresswoma (Rep. Frederica Wilson (D-FL)) stood up, and in the long tradition of empty barrels making the most noise, stood up there and all of that and talked about how she was instrumental in getting the funding for that building, and how she took care of her constituents because she got the money, and she just called up President Obama, and on that phone call he gave the money—the twenty million dollars— to build the building. And she sat down, and we were stunned. Stunned that she had done it. Even for someone that is that empty a barrel, we were stunned. But, you know, none of us went to the press and criticized. None of us  stood up and were appalled. We just said, “O.K., fine.”” -- WH Chief of Staff General Kelly

VERSUS

Rep. Wilson called Kelly’s description of her speech a “lie,” noting that funding for the building had been secured before she ever took office and that she only helped to pass legislation naming the building after two slain FBI agents. The video from the Sun Sentinel supported Wilson’s version of events.

 

“I would say it’s a 10.” -- Trump saying the federal response to hurricane-ravaged Puerto Rico deserves a grade of 10 out of 10.

VERSUS

“If it’s a 10 out of a scale of 100, of course, it’s a failing grade.-- San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz

 

Trump:  “ISIS strongholds in Mosul and Raqqa” have been liberated “as a result” of orders he gave to U.S. commanders during his first days in office. “We have made, alongside our coalition partners, more progress against these evil terrorists in the past several months than in the past several years."

VERSUS

Former Defense Secretary Ash Carter: The plan to retake Raqqa from ISIS was actually laid out two years ago, “and has been executed pretty much in the manner and the schedule that was foreseen then.”

 

“The intelligence community's assessment is that the Russian meddling that took place did not affect the outcome of the election,” Pompeo said. http://www.politico.com/story/2017/10/19/mike-pompeo-cia-russia-influence-election-243967

VERSUS

We did not make an assessment of the impact that Russian activities had on the outcome of the 2016 election. The US Intelligence Community is charged with monitoring and assessing the intentions, capabilities, and actions of foreign actors; it does not analyze US political processes or US public opinion. -- Director of National Intelligence assessment.  https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/ICA_2017_01.pdf

10. Federal judge refuses to erase Joe Arpaio’s conviction despite Trump pardon

“A federal judge shot down former sheriff Joe Arpaio’s bid to sweep his criminal record clean,” the Washington Post reports.

“In her ruling, U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton said the pardon only freed Arpaio from possible punishment. In a four-page order offering a check on the president’s executive power, Bolton wrote that a pardon could not erase the facts of the case.

“The power to pardon is an executive prerogative of mercy, not of judicial recordkeeping,” Bolton wrote in the decision. “To vacate all rulings in this case would run afoul of this important distinction. The Court found Defendant guilty of criminal contempt.”  https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/10/20/federal-judge-refuses-to-erase-joe-arpaios-conviction-despite-trump-pardon/

11. From MEDIA MATTERS (They watch Fox News so you don't have to)

Hannity conspiracy theory: Christopher Steele paid Russians "to give false stories about Donald Trump, with hookers in the Ritz" https://www.mediamatters.org/video/2017/10/19/hannity-conspiracy-theory-christopher-steele-paid-russians-give-false-stories-about-donald-trump/218273

Breitbart adopts Ed Gillespie’s spin in attempt to link sanctuary cities to murder of Muslim teenager https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2017/10/19/breitbart-adopts-ed-gillespie-s-spin-attempt-link-sanctuary-cities-murder-muslim-teenager/218268

Fox's Tucker Carlson is mad about an undocumented teen paying for her own abortion.  https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2017/10/19/foxs-tucker-carlson-mad-about-undocumented-teen-paying-her-own-abortion/218271

Trump tweet about UK crime and Muslims mirrors segment the One America News Network (OANN) which has a history of shilling for Trump and pushing shameful Seth Rich conspiracy theories. https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2017/10/20/trump-tweet-about-uk-crime-and-muslims-mirrors-segment-conspiracy-mongering-network-oann/218281

12. How Fiction Becomes Fact on Social Media

Agents with links to the Russian government set up an endless array of fake accounts and websites and purchased a slew of advertisements on Google and Facebook, spreading dubious claims that seemed intended to sow division all along the political spectrum — “a cultural hack,” in the words of one expert.

Yet the psychology behind social media platforms — the dynamics that make them such powerful vectors of misinformation in the first place — are at least as important, experts say, especially for those who think they’re immune to being duped. For all the suspicions about social media companies’ motives and ethics, it is the interaction of the technology with our common, often subconscious psychological biases that make so many of us vulnerable to misinformation, and this has largely escaped notice.https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/20/health/social-media-fake-news.html

13. ‘My pain is everyday’: After Weinstein’s fall, Trump accusers wonder: Why not him?

The Weinstein scandal, which has featured graphic accounts of assault from a string of celebrity accusers, has sparked a national debate about sexual harassment. Many women, inspired by a #MeToo campaign, have taken to social media to tell their own stories, and calls to the National Sexual Assault Hotline have risen sharply.

But for Trump’s accusers, the renewed debate offers a reminder that their allegations did not have the same effect.

Trump, unlike Weinstein, was able to deflect their claims — despite the disclosure of a video in which he was heard bragging about the kind of behavior some of the women had alleged. Trump has never followed through with his vow to sue his accusers or produce the ‘substantial evidence’ he said would refute their claims. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/my-pain-is-everyday-after-weinsteins-fall-trump-accusers-wonder-why-not-him/2017/10/21/bce67720-b585-11e7-be94-fabb0f1e9ffb_story.html

14. America, armed and dangerous - how severe is the problem?

It's worse than in any other nation in the civilized world. Every day, an average of 300 Americans are shot. There were 36,252 firearm deaths in the U.S. in 2015 — including 22,018 suicides and 12,979 homicides — and at least 85,000 injuries.

Every day, an average of nearly two women are shot dead by their partners. Nearly 6,000 children are shot each year, a fifth accidentally, with 1,300 fatalities. Since 1982, there have been 81 mass shootings — using the definition in which four or more victims die in a public incident — including three this year. (Under an alternative definition of four or more people shot in one incident, there have been 273 mass shootings so far this year.)

Over the past 50 years, more Americans have been killed by guns than in all the wars in the nation's history. The U.S. "suffers disproportionately from firearms," says Erin Grinshteyn, author of a recent study on U.S. gun violence. "They are killing us rather than protecting us."  http://theweek.com/articles/731863/america-armed-dangerous

15. Donald Trump's Approval Rating Plunges As Popularity Nears All-Time Low In Latest Polls

Trump's approval rating neared his all-time low in the Gallup poll. The latest figure in Gallup's tracking survey,<http://news.gallup.com/poll/201617/gallup-daily-trump-job-approval.aspx> released Thursday, pegged Trump's approval at just 35 percent, down from 38 percent at this point last week. He's just one percentage point higher than his lowest rating ever of 34 percent. To make matters worse for the commander-in-chief, Trump's disapproval was nearing his all-time high, as well. It stood at 60 percent, just one percentage point off from his all-time high of 61 percent in early September. The Gallup poll surveys 1,500 U.S. adults and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points. http://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-approval-rating-popularity-low-latest-polls-690138l

16. Congress On Track for Another Shutdown Showdown

Don’t look now, but it’s becoming a real possibility that the government will shut down in December. Congress has until midnight on December 15 to pass a spending bill or the federal government will run out of money.”

The tricky thing is that Republicans need at least eight Democrats in the Senate to meet the 60-vote threshold needed to pass a bill, which means they will need to make some serious compromises to get a spending bill through. https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/10/23/16492584/government-shutdown-explained

17. EPA Cancels Talk on Climate Change by Agency Scientists

The Environmental Protection Agency has canceled the speaking appearance of three agency scientists who were scheduled to discuss climate change at a conference on Monday in Rhode Island.

The move highlights widespread concern that the E.P.A. will silence government scientists from speaking publicly or conducting work on climate change. Scott Pruitt, the agency administrator, has said that he does not believe human-caused greenhouse gas emissions are primarily responsible for the warming of the planet. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/22/climate/epa-scientists.html

18. Hopes Dim for Congressional Russia Inquiries

All three committees looking into Russian interference — one in the House, two in the Senate — have run into problems, from insufficient staffing to fights over when the committees should wrap up their investigations. The Senate Judiciary Committee’s inquiry has barely started, delayed in part by negotiations over the scope of the investigation. Leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee, while maintaining bipartisan comity, have sought to tamp down expectations about what they might find.

Nine months into the Trump administration, any notion that Capitol Hill would provide a comprehensive, authoritative and bipartisan accounting of the extraordinary efforts of a hostile power to disrupt American democracy appears to be dwindling. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/22/us/politics/russia-investigation-congress-intelligence-committees-gowdy.html

19. $300m Puerto Rico Recovery Contract Awarded to Tiny Utility Company Linked to Major Trump Donor

Puerto Rico has agreed to pay a reported $300 million for the restoration of its power grid to a tiny utility company that is primarily financed by a private-equity firm founded and run by a man who contributed large sums of money to President Trump, an investigation conducted by The Daily Beast has found.

Whitefish Energy Holdings, which had a reported staff of only two full-time employees when Hurricane Maria touched down, appears ill-equipped to handle the daunting task of restoring electricity to Puerto Rico’s more than 3 million residents. https://www.thedailybeast.com/dollar300m-puerto-rico-recovery-contract-awarded-to-tiny-utility-company-linked-to-major-trump-donor

20. Late Night Jokes for Dems

President Trump is planning to release a treasure trove, thousands of classified documents connected to the assassination of John F. Kennedy. This is of intense interest to historians and conspiracy theorists. This is a bombshell. The real killer is not Lee Harvey Oswald. It was a 16-year-old Hillary Clinton. Isn’t that something? -- Jimmy Kimmel

The White House released a statement saying the president believes the documents should be made available in the interest of full transparency. His tax returns, however, will remain secret forever, no matter what. -- Jimmy Kimmel

Over the weekend, Sen. John McCain appeared to take a swipe at Donald Trump’s lack of military service. He said that during the Vietnam War a lot of rich people got out of the draft by claiming they had bone spurs. And as you may know Donald Trump famously got out of service in Vietnam due to bone spurs. Now, if you don’t know what bone spurs are, don’t worry, Donald Trump doesn’t know either. -- James Corden

But seriously, bone spurs can make walking very difficult, unless you carry a bag of golf clubs; apparently, then it’s fine. -- James Corden

Trump got out of going to Vietnam five times, and now he’s the president of the United States. So including the World Series, 2017 has been a great year for dodgers. -- James Corden

Did you guys see this conspiracy theory that was going around the internet last week? People claim that Melania Trump had a body double impersonate her during an appearance with her husband. And if you think that is weird, Donald Trump has been impersonating a president for almost a year. -- James Corden

The latest rumor in Washington is President Trump is looking for a replacement for Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. After hearing the job entails constant trips out of the country, Melania volunteered. -- Conan O’Brien

Trump announced that he will release over 3,000 classified files relating to the Kennedy assassination. Spoiler alert: Apparently Hillary did it. -- James Corden

21. Tax Cuts Are the Glue Holding a Fractured Republican Party Together

The Republican tax plan is a bit like having a baby to save a failing marriage.

With divisions roiling the party, the prospect of a once-in-a-generation bill to cut taxes on businesses and individuals increasingly appears to be the last, best hope for a fractured establishment desperate to find common ground and advance an effort it has long championed as the pinnacle of Republican orthodoxy.

But even in this policy refuge, tensions are sure to rise as the details of a formal tax plan spill out. On Wednesday, a top House Republican said that changes to retirement savings were still being considered, even after Mr. Trump declared Monday that “there will be NO change to your 401(k).” https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/25/us/politics/republican-party-tax-cuts.html

22. Trump purges enemies and reshapes party in his image

Donald Trump is squeezing out his enemies in the Republican Party — diminishing the power of the GOP establishment and reshaping his party in his own image.

With the looming exits of Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake and Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker, Trump will rid himself of his two most outspoken Republican detractors. What happens before they depart in 2019 — Flake and Corker demonstrated Tuesday they are fully emboldened now to take on the president without fear of consequences — could determine the success or failure of the GOP-controlled Congress through the 2018 midterms.

But in the short term, there is no question: Trump, and his former strategist and now-Breitbart chief Steve Bannon, are winning. http://www.politico.com/story/2017/10/24/trump-republicans-corker-flake-purge-244139