This week Trump distracts from his continually failing administration by attacking NFL players claiming the “son of a bitch(es) should be fired” for taking a knee during the national anthem, even though the decision to drop to one knee was suggested to Colin Kaepernick’s teammate Eric Reid by a former Green Beret.
After hours of careful consideration, and even a visit from Nate Boyer, a retired Green Beret and former N.F.L. player, we came to the conclusion that we should kneel, rather than sit, the next day during the anthem as a peaceful protest. We chose to kneel because it’s a respectful gesture. I remember thinking our posture was like a flag flown at half-mast to mark a tragedy.
Meanwhlie Puerto Rico slowly starves without food, water or electricity in the wake of Hurricane Maria at least partly because of over 240 vacant positions in NOAA and the Weather Service that was created by Trump’s wrong-headed hiring freeze executive order, and the fact Trump delayed sending the U.S. Navy Hospital ship until Hillary told him too and resists lifting the Jones Shipping act for Puerto Rico to speed supplies into the area, as he did for Texas and Florida, because it would hurt the profits of shipping companies. And while that goes on HHS Secretary Tom Price gets caught wasting $300,000 of tax payer money taking privates jets between New York at Philadelphia, visiting family and his own properties at $17,000 and more per trip,
Mueller’s investigation has shifted to a new gear as he demands access to the IRS records for Paul Manafort going all the way back to 2006 when he began working to advance the agenda of Vladimir Putin in the U.S. and elsewhere to the tune of $10 Million per year paid for by Russian Aluminum Oligarch Oleg Deripaska. Some argue this is straying "too far afield” for the investigation, missing the point that this is exactly where Manafort first became an illegal unregistered foreign agent working on behalf of Russia, not America and that he carried the interests of Russia directly into the campaign when he requested to personally brief Deripaska on the status of the Trump campaign, and reportedly asked Russia for their help against Clinton after they dangled negative information on Hillary in front of Don Jr. last June. All of this has led Sen. Blumenthal to state he feel “almost certain” that Manafort and Flynn will be indicted.
Just prior to directly interviewing many members of the Trump White house staff in coming days, causing even Spicer to finally lawyer up, Mueller has requested documents from the Trump White House on the following subjects showing that he is increasing looking at obstruction implemented by Trump himself:
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Internal communications and documents related to Mike Flynn’s FBI interview in January.
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Documents related to Flynn`s conversations with the Russian ambassador in December.
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Records on acting Attorney General Sally Yates’ warnings to the White House about Flynn.
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Materials related to Flynn’s departure from the White House.
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Communications on Trump’s campaign foreign-policy team, which may have included at least one suspected Russian agent.
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Documents related to Trump’s meetings with former FBI Director James Comey before his firing.
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Records of internal White House discussions about Comey’s firing.
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Documents related to external White House communications about Comey’s firing.
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Documents related to Sean Spicer’s comments about Comey the week before his firing. (Where he stated he had the Trump’s “Full Confidence.”)
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Materials related to Trump’s Oval Office meeting with Russian officials the day after Comey’s firing.
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Records related to last summer’s Trump Tower meeting between top members of Trump’s team and Putin-connected Russians.
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Documents related to the White House’s response to media inquiries about the Trump Tower meeting. (Which were reportedly dictated by Trump himself creating a giant set of lies by omission.)
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Any email or document the White House holds that relates to Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chairman.
Even though Facebook had twice contacted the FBI during the election noting that Russia agents were attempting access critical U.S. information and then weaponize that information across the web, they finally admitted they also did that on their own platform trolling Trump voters as angry Black Lives Matter supporters and Muslims intended to stir up and split Americans apart — just like Trump continues to do himself today and Russian bots continue to amplify and have since Charlottesville — but also promote both the candidacy of Jill Stein and Bernie Sanders even after the primaries were over in order to weaken Hillary Clinton and strengthen Trump.
[This post is part of a larger series including my original Master Timeline which begins in 1986 when Trump first began talking about becoming a diplomat/negotiator with Russia so he could “end the Cold War in an hour” which has been split due to length into Master List Vol 2 beginning in Mid-June and then current Master List Vol 3 beginning in Late-August.
There are also view previous incremental updates for Sept 22, Sept. 17, Sept. 11th, Sept 4th, August 24th, August 17th, August 4th,July 28th, July 14th, July 10th, July 9th, July 4th, June 21st, June 18th, June 14th, June 12th, June 9th, June 6th, andJune 2nd.]
I’ll be honest the person that expresses most clearly what is currently going on with Donald Trump and what happened during the election, is Hillary Clinton herself in these interviews with Chris Hayes. I understand some people think she should “just go away now”, but that is myopic — she has studied this issue as deeply, if not moreso, than I have. She has gained a wealth of understanding the frankly every American should be paying attention to.
She accurately points out that what Trump does is deliberate, it may be spontaneous at times, but it is intended to generate the response that he gets. He admitted this week that he is specifically trying to foster a “White Working Class Cultural War” against the forces of the left, and of course the minority interests that ally with them.
Over the weekend, Mr. Trump, while with a small group of advisers in the dining room of his golf club in Bedminster, N.J., asked a few members what they thought of his attack on Mr. Kaepernick. The response, according to one Trump associate, was polite but decidedly lukewarm.
Mr. Trump responded by telling people that it was a huge hit with his base, making it clear that he did not mind alienating his critics if it meant solidifying his core support.
“The president’s critics have it wrong,” Kellyanne Conway, a White House adviser who served as Mr. Trump’s campaign manager and pollster in 2016, said Monday. “They call him impulsive. He is intuitive.”
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In private, the president and his top aides freely admit that he is engaged in a culture war on behalf of his white, working-class base, a New York billionaire waging war against “politically correct” coastal elites on behalf of his supporters in the South and in the Midwest. He believes the war was foisted upon him by former President Barack Obama and other Democrats — and he is determined to win, current and former aides said.
So he wants to get under the skin of minorities while making working class white shout “Yeah!!”. He wants to “Trigger the Liberals”, that’s all in the plan, but he doesn’t realize our big problem with him isn’t just these relatively petty issues. It’s because he’s corrupt, just as we’ve seen with Tom Price. Whether he himself is a racist or not is now almost besides the point because it would actually be better if he was, because if he’s not a racist — but he’s willing to poke a stick into a hornets nest of racism just because he think it benefits him to the detriment of the entire nation, that cynical manipulation and opportunism is frankly much worse than simply being a racial coward or hater.
Doing that, deliberating pandering to racists — as Jared Kushner specifically said he only pretended to be a birther because “Republicans are Stupid” — is simply being a stone cold asshole.
Detailed Daily Breakdown:
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September 22nd —
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Foreign Policy reports that Kremlin-backed media outlet RT attempted to purchase Twitter handles “@NotHillary” and “@NotTrump” that would allow them to covertly influence the election with undecided voters without revealing who they really were. Twitter said “No.”
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Trump tweets attacking the Russia Investigation yet again with classic “WhatAboutism” : “The Russia hoax continues, now it's ads on Facebook. What about the totally biased and dishonest Media coverage in favor of Crooked Hillary? [You mean the fact that the FBI cleared her of all criminal accusations, yet Comey still personally trashed her in complete violation of FBI standards and protocols, then released information about an ongoing investigation — without ever mentioning they were also investigating your campaign at the same time?] He also says “The greatest influence over our election was the Fake News Media "screaming" for Crooked Hillary Clinton. Next, she was a bad candidate!” [A bad candidate that got 3 Million more votes than you did.]
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Kim Jong-Un responds to Trump’s UN speech and calls him a “Dotard”, then his Foreign Secretary threatens to detonate a Hydrogen Bomb over the Pacific Ocean, so clearly all that “tough guy” talk is having the exact desired effect.
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Russian foreign minister Lavrov tells both Trump and Kim Jong-Un to “Tone down the bellicose rhetoric.” [So great, the autocratic kleptocrats are the adults in the room now?]
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John McCain drives a 9-Inch Nail through the eye of the latest Trumpcare Zombie Graham-Cassidy which Brookings says will take care away from 21 Million people by officially announcing he won't vote for it.
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Joel Olsteen, after his horrible PR during and after Hurricane Harvey, opens his prosperity gospel church to a jewish congregation, because nobody has ever, ever thought of that before.
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In protest of his 2015 comments anecdotally supporting the premise of the so-called “Ferguson Effect” where police are supposedly afraid to do their jobs for risk they might be accused of bigotry or brutality students at Howard University chant “No Justice No Peace” while James Comey attempts to give them a convocation. [Know you audience dude, know your audience.]
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ACLU sues St. Louis police over their handling of the Anthony Lamar Smith protests.
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Betsy Devos changes Obama era rules on campus sexual assault to make thing “more fair” to the accused assaulters, as if that’s something that’s really needed, anywhere.
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Anthony Scarimucci who clearly isn’t a fan of Steve “Sucks his own cock” Bannon, tells The View that he does have “White Nationalist Tendencies”. “If you read Breitbart, it’s got a lot of that white nationalist economic fervor.” [No, kiddin’, it does?]
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Kremlin spokesman Dimtri Peskov, yes Michael Cohen’s Dimitri Peskov, states that Russia did not attempt to use Facebook ads to influence the U.S. election even though Facebook themselves have just promised to provide 3000 of these ads to Congress.
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TPM reports that those false Facebook ads were generated by fake profiles with stolen pictures of innocent people intended to make it appear they were generated by Americans, not Russians.
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House Intel committee member Mike Quigley warns that the ground is being laid to have Mueller fired in order to cancel the Russia investigation.
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The Seattle Times reports that Russian hackers attempted to access the election systems in Washington State, but — according to them — failed. This was apparently a seperate attempt from the breaches in 39 other state election systems noted by Bloomberg.
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Sen Grassley as part of his ongoing counter-investigation of the Russia investigation sends a letter to the FBI asking if they warned the Trump campaign about contacts between themselves and Russians. [a) They should’ve already know that since they were there at the time, b) They told CONGRESS and Mitch McConnell refused to support a joint bipartisan public statement about Russian interference and 3) What do you think Sally Yates was doing in Don McGahn’s office when she came there to tell them about Flynn & Kislyak??!]
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McCain blast Grassley for “clearly trying to distract” from the investigation into Russia.
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DHS informs 21 states that their elections systems were targeted by Russian government “cyber actors” including Wisconsin, Alabama, Oklahoma, Oregon, Delaware, Colorado, Connecticut and Washington who are informed that the breaches were unsuccessful.
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Some researcher argue that the 470 false Facebook accounts from the Internet Research Agency may be the “tip of the iceberg” since 50,000 false accounts were identified by French authorities during their election, and IRS’s former building now houses a new company called Glasvet.
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Trump gives a rally in Alabama for Senatorial candidate Luther Strange and states that NFL owners should “fire any Son of a Bitch” that disrespects the flag by kneeling [even though the idea to do that came from an ex-Green Beret in order to show respect] and even though he himself stated in 2011 that burning the flag was a perfectly acceptable protest and the third verse of the National Anthem is decidedly pro-Slaver and racist. He complains about penalties for hard hits saying it has “ruined the game” even though on the same day autopsy information reveals that Aaron Hernandez who had committed murder and suicide was suffering from severe brain damage due to CTE.
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September 23rd —
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Colin Kaepernick’s mom responds to Trump “Guess that makes me a proud bitch.”
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NFL Commissioner Goodell slaps down Trumps statements saying the NFL is at their best when they “build a sense of unity.”
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Trump doubles down claiming “athletes giving the privilege to earn $Millions shouldn’t be allowed to protest. Tell them to stand”. Then he starts a twitter fight with Steph Curry of the Golden State Warriors because he said he wasn’t sure he wanted to visit the White House, so Trump disinvites him. Strangely he didn’t say anything when his pal Tom Brady skipped his teams visit to the Obama White House. Nor did he say anything when two dozen members of the Patriots didn’t visit the WH this year.
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The Warriors respond by cancelling their WH Visit entirely, the mayor of DC then invites them to visit him instead of Trump. Lebron James chimes in calling Trump a “bum”. NBA Union head Chris Paul says Trump doesn’t have the manhood to call someone an SOB to their face.
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DHS releases list of 21 State Election systems that were attacked by Russia. Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Iowa, Maryland, Minnesota, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin. Only Illinois confirmed that the breach was successful.
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September 24th —
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Dozens of players drop to their knee during the Anthem during Sunday’s games, others including coaches and owners lock arms in solidarity with each other in protest of Trump's comments. The Pittsburg Steelers stay in the locker room during the anthem except for one player who is a former army ranger. Terry Bradshaw lights up Trump on Fox Sports saying “He doesn’t understand what freedom means.” NBA Champion Warriors coach Steve Kerr says “You know what else is disrespectful to our flag? Racism.” Kobe Bryant says “Trump divides America.”
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Fox Host Pete Hegseth asks “What are we protesting? “This is the least sexist, least racist, most equal, most free country in the history of mankind.” Er, not if people don’t have the freedom to protest a national anthem that has a racist third verse, while U.S police have killed more Americans since 9/11 than died in Washington, New York, Iran and Afghanistan combined by an order of 5 to 1.
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Fox News sends a White Host to ask (mostly) White Fans about Anthem protests, race and police aren’t mentioned. Yeah, it’s Hegseth again.
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Trump tweet attacks John McCain for his opposition to Graham-Cassidy claiming premiums have skyrocketed “116% in Arizona” ignoring the fact that subsidies cover most of the cost of those increases for people on the exchange, that only 1 plan actually increased over 100%, over 50 plans decreased in price. He claims Alaska’s premiums increased 200% when in fact the overall average in Alaska was a 25% increase. However when you include the tax credits — which will be cut under Graham-Cassidy — that increase goes down to just 1% for out of pocket costs.
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After Facebook CEO Zuckerberg had dismissed the idea that the platform was being used by foreign propagandists to distribute fake news last Nov 19th, Obama personally took him aside at a conference to set him straight. Also it’s reported that even though they had denied any strange Russian activity, Facebook had twice contacted the FBI about Russia in 2016.
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Politico reports that Jared Kushner used his own private email account after the election along with his official White House account.
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Rabid Trump fans argue that Baltimore Ravens owner Shahid Khan should be deported because he locked arms with his players, even though he’s been an American Citizen since 1991.
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Mnuchin says players can do “Free Speech on their own time” — which kinda means it’s not really free now is it?
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September 25th —
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September 26h —
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Long time GOP dirty trickster and Trump buddy Roger Stone who communicated with by Guccifer 2.0 and Julian Assange flatly denies any Russia collusion to House Intel in private meeting, because he’s plenty credible since also admits in his written statement that he had an ongoing online relationship with at least one suspected Russian agent sharing DMs and retweets between them. He refuses to share the ID of the journalist who was his link to Wikileaks and Assange, he again says when he said it would be “Podesta’s time in the barrel” he was talking about financial links to Russia, but those links belong to John’s brother Tony & the Uranium deal he had nothing to do with. He claims the DNC hack was a “inside job” from an article in The Nation that even The Nation has debunked.
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Spicer Lawyers Up finally as Mueller interviews for WH current and former staff grows closer.
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Trump spends dinner with GOP supporters bashing Jeff Sessions for his recusal — which was recommended by professional staff at DOJ. “He was dripping with venom.”
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Iraq holds the vote on it’s Kurdish independence referendum which is strongly supported by Russian and Paul Manafort who is a paid consultant for the Kurdistan. It’s not clear if Manafort traveled there for the event.
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Chicago PD vows to “Discipline” officers who were photographed “Taking a Knee” and raising a Black Power salute for making a political statement while in uniform.
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Dallas Cowboys Owner Jerry Jones takes a knee while locking arms with his players who all kneel together before the anthem is played.
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At least 6 of Trump’s staff including Kushner, Ivanka Conway, Bannon & Cohn used private email while in the White House to conduct government business.
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Susan Collins confirms she’s a “No” vote on Graham-Cassidy which along with Rand Paul and John McCain’s opposition puts the Zombie back to death. CBO’s preliminary estimates are released and they say that “Millions” would lose health coverage.
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WaPo reports that Russia’s Facebook ads were intended to highten fear of Muslims and Black Lives Matter.
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Sarah Huckabee-Sanders claims Trump’s “Son of a bitch” statements are “appropriate” and that it had “Nothing to do with Race” even though the protests are mostly by African-Americans against Police Brutality and Racism. She says that if the issue is police brutality they should “protests the officers that are protecting them, not the flag.” CNN panelists call it “alarming and appalling.” Yep, you betcha.
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Trump finally tweets about Puerto Rico after Huckabee-Sanders is asked why he’s posted over a dozen times about the NFL and sports players but not the impact of Hurricane Maria.
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US Appeals court partially allows Texas anti-Sanctuary City law.
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Tommie Smith who raised the Black Power salute as a Gold Medalist in the 1968 Olympics appears on CNN and says to Trump “It’s time to understand, time to converse with the Players” and the reason their protesting.
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Trump “spiritual advisor” Dallas Texas Pastor Robert Jeffries says protesting NFL players “ought to be thanking God that they live in a country where they’re not only free to earn millions of dollars every year, but they’re also free from the worry of being shot in the head for taking a knee like they would be if they were in North Korea.” [Really, man?] He also says Trump is “no racist.” [Ok, sure he just plays one whenever the cameras and microphones are on him just to fool the rubes.]
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the IRS after some negotiating is reportedly sharing information with Mueller about Manafort’s taxes going back 11 years all the way back to when Manafort began working with Oleg Deripaski to help promote Putin’s interest in the U.S. and former soviet states,
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Mueller is probing 3 Russian affiliated donors who may have given $Millions to the RNC and Trump’s inaugural fund.
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Trump privately admits to waging a “White Working Class Culture War” he claims Obama and Democrats “foisted” upon him. He finally starts talking about Puerto Rico and twice blames “the Atlantic” for their problems. Yes, the Ocean.
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Sen Grassley complains that FBI staff connected to Comey who have been interviewed by Mueller have signed non-disclosure agreements preventing them from sharing all of what they’ve told Mueller with Congress.
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Luther Strange loses the primary runoff for Sessions open Alabama Senate against theocrat nutbag Judge Roy Moore so Trump defies the Presidential records act and starts deleting his tweets praising Strange.
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Reports surface that HHS Secretary Price — who had a history of trading the stock of companies he was overseeing in the House, and wants to cut spending on Medicare & Medicaid — has taken over $300,000 worth of tax payer funded private plane flights and used much of it to visit family and his own properties, including $17k for a flight from Washington to Philadelphia which is a 2 hour drive away.
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Trump orders the Navy's Hospital ship U.S.N.S.. Comfort from it’s port in Norfolk, VA. to Puerto Rico two days after Hillary Clinton requested it. It should arrive in another 5 days.
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Acting DEA head Chuck Rosenburg — who had been James Comey’s Chief of Staff at both the DOJ and FBI — resigns in protest of Trump’s comments endorsing police brutality saying his has no respect for the “Rule of Law.”
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September 27th --
