President Donald Trump went on an extensive tweetstorm on Wednesday, which included retweeting a meme calling for his political opponents — and current attorney general — to be thrown in jail.
As you can see, the image shows former president Barack Obama, former FBI Director James Comey, the Clinton family, and several other Trump enemies behind bars after supposedly being tried for “treason.” Interestingly enough, the image also shows special counsel Robert Mueller and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein in prison as well.
On Wednesday night, like most other weeknights, it was to be expected that President Trump would be tuning into his favorite prime-time pundit. But as if his followers needed a reminder, the president tweeted about it.
“Big show tonight on @seanhannity!” Trump tweeted, promoting Sean Hannity’s 9 p.m. segment on Fox News. By early Thursday morning, Hannity was the No. 1 topic trending on Twitter, and scores of viewers watched as Hannity fired out his usual attacks on his favorite subjects: Hillary Clinton, special counsel Robert S. Mueller III and former FBI director James B. Comey.
In a conspiratorial, long-winded monologue, Hannity charted connections he sees among all three of them. The pundit outlined what he described as “obvious Deep State crime families trying to take down the president,” consisting of the Clinton “family,” the Comey “family” and the Mueller “family.”
Hannity said he was inspired by Comey, who appeared in a video this week promoting an interview between Comey and ABC’s George Stephanopoulos that will air Sunday. In the interview, Stephanopoulos suggests that Comey compared Trump to a “mob boss.”
“Mr. Comey, you’re really going to compare the sitting president of the United States to a mob boss so you can make money?” Hannity said of the former FBI director, who is currently promoting his soon-to-be-released book. “If he’s going to use a sweeping analogy, I’ve decided tonight we’re going to use the Comey standard … and make some comparisons of our own.”
He began with what he called “a family responsible for actual crimes … the head of the notorious political cabal, of course Bill and Hillary Clinton, the Clinton crime family.”
For the Clinton family, Hannity brought up allegations of sexual misconduct against President Bill Clinton and, of course, accused Hillary Clinton of committing crimes, obstructing justice and mishandling national secrets on a private server. Linked to the Clinton “crime family” were individuals such as Hillary Clinton aides Cheryl Mills and Huma Abedin, “sketchy” former Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe, former attorney general Loretta E. Lynch, and others, including Christopher Steele, the author of the “dossier” alleging ties between Trump and Russia.
Then there’s the “Mueller Crime Family,” Hannity said. The host drew connections between the special counsel and his “best friend” Comey, as well as notorious gangster and killer Whitey Bulger. Hannity accused Mueller of “looking the other way” at Bulger’s crimes while he was a federal prosecutor in Boston. Then, of course, Hannity mapped out the “Comey Crime Family,” linking the former FBI director to Lynch, Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein, Steele, former deputy attorney general Sally Yates, and “fellow Comey Deep State sycophant” former CIA director John Brennan.
Though Hannity retweeted Trump’s tweet promoting his Wednesday night show, he insisted that the president “was not given ANY heads up on my monologue using the ‘Comey’ standard!!!”
Regardless of what Trump knew before the show, the president is known to watch Hannity’s show regularly and look to it for guidance.
As CNN’s Brian Stelter tweeted, Wednesday night illustrated that “the line where Fox News ends and where Trump begins is getting blurrier by the day.”
Aides have said Trump regularly calls Hannity before or after the program to give feedback, The Washington Post’s Josh Dawsey has reported. “Aides sometimes plot to have guests make points on Fox that they have been unable to get the president to agree to in person,” Dawsey wrote.
Hannity on Wednesday night once again called the Russia investigation a “witch hunt,” as does Trump, and brought on guests who attempted to discredit Justice Department officials and the special counsel.
Amid an expanding chorus of questions about interaction between Russian officials and his own advisers during the presidential campaign, President Donald Trump resurfaced attacks in a set of tweets Monday night alleging improper Russian ties for both former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
On Twitter, Trump wrote: “Why isn’t the House Intelligence Committee looking into the Bill & Hillary deal that allowed big Uranium to go to Russia, Russian speech….”
About 10 minutes later, the President completed the message, writing, “…money to Bill, the Hillary Russian ‘reset,’ praise of Russia by Hillary, or Podesta Russian Company. Trump Russia story is a hoax. #MAGA!”
Why isn't the House Intelligence Committee looking into the Bill & Hillary deal that allowed big Uranium to go to Russia, Russian speech….
The House Intelligence Committee, as well as its Senate counterpart, are investigating Russia’s alleged attempts to influence the election, including any possible collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign. FBI Director James Comey disclosed publicly last week that the FBI is doing the same.
The evening Twitter references recalled a Clinton controversy documented in The New York Times two years ago. Trump’s campaign made the same claim last fall when he was competing against Clinton to become president.
Nick Merrill, a former Clinton campaign spokesman, immediately refuted Trump on Twitter and linked to a fact-checking website.
The State Department under Clinton was one of several agencies that signed off on a deal that included the Russian atomic energy agency. During the period of the deal, a Russian investment bank tied to the deal paid Bill Clinton for a speech and the Canadian chairman of the entity being sold to Russia moved funding to the Clinton Foundation.
Former Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta had been a member of the board of a Russian energy company.
Now that the Electoral College has officially made him president-elect, Donald Trump spent Tuesday holding meetings and feuding with former president Bill Clinton.
Responding to criticism from the ex-president, Trump said he and 2016 Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton lost this year’s election because they failed to pay attention to essential states.
“They focused on wrong states,” Trump said in a brief tweet burst.
In an interview with a weekly newspaper in New York state, Clinton said that Trump “doesn’t know much,” but “one thing he does know is how to get angry, white men to vote for him.” Clinton also said that Trump called him after the election, another source of dispute between the two men.
Tweeted Trump: “Bill Clinton stated that I called him after the election. Wrong, he called me (with a very nice congratulations).”
The president-elect said Clinton is the one who “doesn’t know much,” including “how to get people, even with an unlimited budget, out to vote in the vital swing states ( and more).”
While losing the popular vote to Hillary Clinton by more than 2.8 million, Trump triumphed in the Electoral College by winning more states. They included industrial states that had gone Democratic in recent presidential elections: Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.
Electors in those and other states ratified Trump’s victory in Monday meetings of the Electoral College.
Despite the efforts of anti-Trump organizations, only two electors defected from the Republican candidate; five Democratic electors refused to vote for Clinton.
“With this historic step we can look forward to the bright future ahead,” the president-elect said after the Electoral College vote. “I will work hard to unite our country and be the President of all Americans. Together, we will make America great again.”
The president-elect is spending Christmas week at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla., where he is holding job interviews and planning meetings.
Trump also issued statements condemning deadly attacks in Germany and Turkey.
After a truck attack on a holiday market in Berlin, Trump said “innocent civilians were murdered in the streets as they prepared to celebrate the Christmas holiday … These terrorists and their regional and worldwide networks must be eradicated from the face of the earth, a mission we will carry out with all freedom-loving partners.”
Trump also spoke out after Russia’s ambassador to Turkey, Andrei Karlov, was “assassinated by a radical Islamic terrorist.”
He added: “The murder of an ambassador is a violation of all rules of civilized order and must be universally condemned.”
Donald Trump’s campaign sought to intimidate Hillary Clinton by inviting women who have accused Bill Clinton of sexual abuse to sit in the family area close to the center of Sunday night’s presidential debate.
The four women planned to walk in the debate hall at the same time as the former president and confront him in front of a live television audience, according to sources close to the situation.
The plan was first reported by the Washington Post but was later confirmed by NBC News. It was thwarted moments before the event went on-air when the Commission on Presidential Debates intervened to prevent it, even threatening to get security to block the women.
The four — Juanita Broaddrick, Paula Jones, Kathleen Willey and Kathy Shelton — eventually sat in the audience alongside other ticketed members.
If the plan had gone ahead, the women would have sat in the Trump family box which was in an elevated area close to the stage and in front of the cameras.
“We were going to put the four women in the VIP box,” Trump supporter and former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani was quoted as saying by the Washington Post. “We had it all set. We wanted to have them shake hands with Bill, to see if Bill would shake hands with them.”
The newspaper said the plot was nixed by Frank J. Fahrenkopf, the debate commission’s co-chairman and a former Republican National Committee chairman, who warned that security personnel would remove the women.
Clinton’s campaign manager Robby Mook said Hillary knew about what he called an “awkward stunt at the beginning of the debate.”
“He wanted to throw Hillary Clinton off her game. And he need to rehabilitate what has been a failing campaign,” Mook told reporters.”The stunt didn’t work and frankly the debate didn’t work for Trump because this race fundamentally hasn’t changed.”
He added: “This was a painful moment in her marriage and it was litigated very heavily 20 years ago … this was an attempt by Donald Trump to throw her off, try to distract. The problem that he has, and the reason he lost this debate, is he has no command of the issues.”
Bill Clinton has denied all the allegations lobbed by his accusers and was never charged with any crimes, but was impeached by the Republican House in 1998 for lying about an affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky.
Broaddrick, who has accused the former president of rape, submitted an affidavit in 1998 denying that Bill Clinton had made nonconsensual sexual advances, which she later recanted.
Donald Trump, reeling after two days of Republican disavowals and disaffections over a 2005 videotape of him bragging about his ability to get away with sexual assault, attempted to change the subject to his opponent’s husband’s alleged infidelities.
Just 90 minutes before his second debate Sunday night with Hillary Clinton, the GOP nominee held a surprise panel, broadcast live to Facebook, with women who have accused Bill Clinton of sexual misconduct — in effect, dousing a campaign already on fire with buckets of fresh gasoline and bringing the worst fears of many Republicans to a stunning realization.
Seated beside four women — including Juanita Broaddrick, Paula Jones, Kathleen Willey and Kathy Shelton — Trump addressed viewers ahead of the debate, making an issue of the sexual history of Bill Clinton, who is not running for president.
“These four very courageous women have asked to be here, and it was our honor to help them,” Trump said of the women who then excused his comments caught on tape and released on Friday.
“Actions speak louder than words,” said Broaddrick. “Mr. Trump may have said some bad words, but Bill Clinton raped me and Hillary Clinton threatened me. I don’t think there’s anything worse.”
Broaddrick once signed an affadavit saying Clinton did not in fact rape her, but later recanted.
Standing in the back of the Four Seasons Hotel ballroom were Trump’s closest aides, including Breitbart publisher Steve Bannon and David Bossie, who have made a career — on the fringes of conservative politics — out of attacking the Clintons.
The surprise roundtable and the tawdriness of the subject is unprecedented in presidential politics, especially on the eve of a debate.
Trump, whose campaign has long tested a fragile Republican coalition that now is undeniably in tatters, is responding to a 48-hour period in which he saw dozens of GOP officeholders pull their endorsements after the video recording that showed him bragging to TV host Billy Bush about his ability to get away with “grab[bing women] by the pussy.”
Ever defiant amidst calls that he surrender the nomination and step aside, Trump is instead engaging in a scorched-earth assault that is only likely to further erode his diminished standing with women voters with potentially devastating consequences for the Republican Party, which is now bracing itself for more sweeping losses down the ballot.
Clinton, who has taken a few days off the campaign trail to prepare for the second debate and the very likelihood of such an attack from Trump, has said very little publicly since the lewd videotape came to light on Friday.
Her campaign, however, issued a statement roughly an hour before the debate began characterizing Trump’s publicity stunt as an act of desperation.
“We’re not surprised to see Donald Trump continue his destructive race to the bottom,” said Clinton’s communications director, Jennifer Palmieri. “Hillary Clinton understands the opportunity in this town hall is to talk to voters on stage and in the audience about the issues that matter to them, and this stunt doesn’t change that.
“If Donald Trump doesn’t see that, that’s his loss. As always, she’s prepared to handle whatever Donald Trump throws her way.”
(h/t Politico)
Reality
Donald Trump is asking you to ignore the actual recorded words he said 10 years ago, but to pay attention to the allegations of women against the spouse of his political opponent 20-30 years ago.
