"What's going on with Drudge?" Trump has been asking allies since Democratic lawmakers launched the impeachment probe in late September, according to a person with knowledge of his private remarks. Two other sources who've heard the president complain told The Daily Beast that Trump has asked those close to him why they think Drudge and his website have seemed "so anti-Trump" lately.In recent weeks, Trump has even asked Jared Kushner, his son-in-law and a top White House official--who has had a friendly relationship with the site's creator--to "look into it" and reach out to Drudge, the sources said. [...]The president's concern over Drudge's coverage of the impeachment proceedings underscores how sensitive he has been to ensuring that his fellow travelers, in Republican politics and in influential media, do not break from him as Democrats take steps to remove him from office over the Ukraine scandal.
This month, at a gathering of influential Democrats, he cautioned the 2020 contenders against pushing too far, too fast on policy: "This is still a country that is less revolutionary than it is interested in improvement."That distinction helps explain why so many of the candidates' proposals seem so far to the left of Obama. The former president was skeptical of sweeping change, bullish on markets, sanguine about the use of military force, high on individual responsibility and faithful to a set of old-school personal values. Compare that with the agenda of his would-be successors: Medicare for all, free college, a wealth tax, universal basic income.Given the political climate, it's no surprise to see the party's base clamoring for something more dramatic. But the contrast between Obama's steady appraoch and the seeming radicalism of his Democratic heirs can't simply be chalked up to changing times. It's because the former president, going back at least to his 2004 Senate race, hasn't really occupied the left side of the ideological political spectrum. He wasn't a Republican, obviously: He never professed a desire to starve the federal government, and he opposed the Iraq War that Republicans overwhelmingly supported. But to the dismay of many on the left, and the continuing disbelief of many on the right, Obama never dramatically departed from the approach of presidents who came before him.There's a simple reason for that: Barack Obama is a conservative. [...][H]e was, and remains, skeptical of sweeping change, bullish on markets, sanguine about the use of military force, high on individual responsibility and faithful to a set of old-school personal values. To the dismay of many on the left, and to the continuing disbelief of many on the right, Obama never dramatically departed from the approach of presidents who came before him.
[I]t's fitting that Republicans have given this seven-term sycophant a starring role in the televised House Intelligence Committee impeachment hearings against President Donald Trump. The assignment comes as Jordan is being credibly accused by some of knowingly turning a blind eye to sexual abuse by a team doctor when Jordan was an assistant wrestling coach at Ohio State University from 1987 to 1994.At least five people - four of them former wrestlers and one of them a longtime friend - have said Jordan had to have known former OSU team doctor Richard Strauss was on a sexual rampage that would include -- according to OSU -- 1,429 sexual assaults and 47 rapes of student patients during Strauss' time at the school (1978 to 1998) prior to his suicide in 2005.That makes Jordan an ideal candidate to lead the defense of a malignant president who has bragged about physically abusing women and who has been accused by two dozen women of sexual assault or misconduct. [...]When Jordan slithers out from under his rock each morning, dons a shirt and tie - sans the jacket, lest he be mistaken for Joe McCarthy - his life's work is to besmirch everything America stands for in service of Donald Trump.If it takes undermining yet another principle of democracy by condoning attacks on men and women who have devoted their lives in honorable service to this country, Jordan is always ready and willing.If it takes changing the Trump defense strategy on an almost daily basis because facts keep getting in the way, Jordan is the ideal bootlicker. Trump's support is all that seems to matter to the man former House Speaker John Boehner regularly referred to as "a legislative terrorist" - along with a whole bunch of other descriptions unfit for print.
Here's another album cover photo superimposed on the location where it was shot (from @Popspotsnyc). This one is quite timely, given the @rollinsbridge campaign. pic.twitter.com/kG4x9N9MJu
— Ted Gioia (@tedgioia) December 28, 2017
Secretary of the Navy Richard Spencer said Friday that a military review of the status of Navy SEAL Edward Gallagher should proceed despite President Donald Trump tweeting Thursday that Gallagher should not lose it, a possible outcome of the review.
An ethics group late Friday published nearly 100 pages of previously unreleased State Department documents that the group says shows "a clear paper trail" between President Donald Trump's lawyer Rudy Giuliani and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo before a Ukraine ambassador was abruptly recalled. [...]The documents released Friday appear to confirm that Pompeo and Giuliani spoke on the phone on March 26, and that another call was scheduled between the two men for March 29 and that it took place.One email appears to show Trump's former personal assistant, Madeleine Westerhout, helping to connect Giuliani to Pompeo after there was trouble establishing a connection.The documents do not say what Giuliani and Pompeo discussed. The March 29 call was scheduled for 20 minutes but lasted just four minutes, according to the documents, and the March 26 call was also just minutes long, the emails show.A request for comment from the State Department was not immediately returned after the documents were released late Friday.The emails also show that before the acting U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Bill Taylor, took the job he was among six former Ukraine ambassadors who objected to "recent uncorroborated allegations" about Yovanovitch.The April letter from Taylor and the five others says, "these charges are simply wrong."Taylor told Congress he was asked to return to lead the embassy in Kyiv in May by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. In his testimony, Taylor said his initial reservation about taking the job was because of the poor treatment of Yovanovitch.
A lawyer for an indicted associate of Rudy Giuliani tells CNN that his client is willing to tell Congress about meetings the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee had in Vienna last year with a former Ukrainian prosecutor to discuss digging up dirt on Joe Biden.The attorney, Joseph A. Bondy, represents Lev Parnas, the recently indicted Soviet-born American who worked with Giuliani to push claims of Democratic corruption in Ukraine. Bondy said that Parnas was told directly by the former Ukrainian official that he met last year in Vienna with Rep. Devin Nunes."Mr. Parnas learned from former Ukrainian Prosecutor General Victor Shokin that Nunes had met with Shokin in Vienna last December," said Bondy.Shokin was ousted from his position in 2016 after pressure from Western leaders, including then-vice president Biden, over concerns that Shokin was not pursuing corruption cases. [...]Solomon also said that Di Genova and Toensing, his lawyers, introduced him to Parnas as a facilitator and interpreter in early March. "Parnas was very helpful to me in getting Ukraine officials on the record," Solomon told CNN. "I only gradually realized Lev was working for other people, including Rudy Giuliani."
In Sondland's supplemental testimony, where he had admitted that he told Andriy Yermak on September 1 that Ukraine would not receive the security assistance frozen by President Trump without announcing the investigations, Sondland said he had only "presumed" that the suspension of the aid "had become linked to the proposed anti-corruption statement," but that he did not have any explicit direction from the president.Sondland stuck to this claim in his public testimony this week, but added some important details. Under questioning from minority council Steve Castor, Sondland said that he had made this presumption because the aid had been withheld by the president, it hadn't been released by this point, and they were not "getting anywhere with the Ukrainians."This explanation by Sondland is convincing. By late August, the White House had withheld a vital White House meeting for Zelensky to demand the investigations, and then the president had also withheld security assistance. The conclusion that the security assistance had been withheld for the same purpose was by then inescapable; Trump sought his investigations, had conditioned a White House meeting on them, and now was withholding the assistance, too.At this week's public hearing, House Intelligence Committee Republicans strained to question Sondland's judgment on this point. They said he based his "presumption" on no evidence. However, Sondland bolstered his position: He said he sent an email to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on August 22 asking if they should schedule a meeting in Warsaw for Trump and Zelensky, in which Zelensky would discuss moving "forward publicly and with confidence on those issues of importance to POTUS and the U.S. Hopefully, that will break the logjam." Sondland testified that the "issues of importance to POTUS" were the investigations (the only things Trump asked of Zelensky on his infamous July 25 call), and the "logjam" included the withheld security assistance. Pompeo's reply? "Yes."Furthermore, Sondland testified that on September 1 he had told Vice President Mike Pence that he "had concerns that the delay in aid had become tied to the issue of investigations." Pence nodded, Sondland said, "like, you know, he heard what I said."Sondland is establishing, then, that two of the most senior officials in the Trump administration knew of his belief that the security assistance had become linked to the investigations, just as the White House meeting had been, and neither Pompeo nor Pence pushed back. Neither of them asked him what Sondland was talking about. Neither of them said, That's crazy, and it's false. They responded as if they were well aware.
Approximately 0.5% of North Americans have been clinically diagnosed with celiac disease. When people with this autoimmune genetic disease eat gluten, it damages their small intestine, leading to other long-term health effects. The number of documented cases has dramatically risen over the past 30 to 40 years, though researchers aren't sure why.While consumers with celiac and non-celiac gluten sensitivity should definitely avoid gluten, there is no strong scientific evidence that anyone else needs to reduce their gluten consumption. In fact, there is no evidence that would support the notion that gluten-free foods are any healthier than foods filled with gluten for most of the population.Nevertheless, disagreement rages on regarding whether gluten sensitivity is real and deserves the same universal acceptance that diagnosable diseases like celiac and other established health conditions enjoy.The contention that gluten sensitivity goes along with liberalism takes the debate even further. If this were true, it would have serious implications for policy decisions and food marketing strategies. It would imply that gluten sensitivity is not strictly a medical condition but a social construct, which would not require the same regulatory concern as other health conditions.To conduct our analysis, Norwood and I asked 1,086 U.S. consumers four questions about their perceptions of gluten.We created a "gluten aversion index" by adding up each person's responses. A score of 4 would indicate that the respondent was not at all gluten avoidant, while a score of 28 would indicate that the respondent was extremely gluten avoidant. After removing the surprisingly high 3.7% of individuals who told us they'd been clinically diagnosed with celiac disease, we looked at the linkage between political ideology and gluten sensitivity.Contrary to the common stereotype, we found no evidence that the political left is more likely to report being gluten sensitive. In fact, when we divided our sample by preferred president of the past few decades, those who selected Donald Trump were also the most likely to identify as gluten avoidant.
Republicans have sought for weeks to shift attention to President Trump's demands that Ukraine investigate any 2016 election meddling, defending it as a legitimate concern while Democrats accuse Trump of pursuing fringe theories for his benefit.But in a briefing, US intelligence officials informed senators and their aides in recent weeks that Russia had engaged in a yearslong campaign to essentially frame Ukraine as responsible for Moscow's own hacking of the 2016 election, according to three US officials. The briefing came as Republicans stepped up their defenses of Trump in the Ukraine affair.The revelations demonstrate Russia's persistence in trying to sow discord among its adversaries -- and show that the Kremlin apparently succeeded, as unfounded claims about Ukrainian interference seeped into Republican talking points.