Donald Trump's nominee to lead the Veterans Administration, Dr. Ronnie Jackson, has withdrawn and will return to the White House to continue as Trump's personal physician. On Thursday, as the news broke, CNN discussed the situation.
Trump is not happy, and is now targeting Montana Senator Jon Tester, who sunk the nomination of Dr. Ronnie "Candy Man" Jackson with a memo that cited sources alleging that Jackson handed out prescription pills without proper examinations, drank on the job, and once wrecked a government car after a Secret Service going away party.
Matt Lewis of The Daily Beast doesn't think Trump's attacks on Tester are going to go anywhere. This is Trump "trying to salvage something," out of yet another setback.
"I don't think this nominee was actually qualified for the job," he said. "Dr. Ronny Jackson was not qualified to run the VA. I think that, in and of itself, deserves him to have withdrawn."
The White House didn't do Jackson any favors but not preparing or vetting him, said host John Berman.
"This is yet another example of Trump taking actually someone who had a pretty sterling reputation, this guy way highly regarded and respected... and now his reputation is in tatters," Lewis said. "For some reason Donald Trump has this sort of reverse Midas effect on people he interacts with."
The panel on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" broke into their regularly scheduled discussion on the chaos of the White House to watch clips from President Donald Trump's call into "Fox & Friends" on Thursday morning, with host Joe Scarborough declaring Trump is now officially "unhinged."
Trump's rant -- which leaped from subject to subject where he attacked his own Justice Department, his personal attorney Michael Cohen, Democrats and basically everyone outside the White House -- contained more than a few questionable assertions which caused Scarborough to bluntly tell the president, "Everything you just said was wrong."
Specifically, Scarborough pushed back at Trump for attacking former FBI director James Comey's assertion in a memo about the president's sleepover in Russia.
"Those memos were about me and they are phony," Trump excitedly exclaimed. "He didn't write them accurately. For instance, I went to Russia for a day or so, a day or two, because I own the Miss Universe pageant. I went there to watch it because it was near Moscow, so I go to Russia -- everybody knows the planes are there. He said I didn't stay there, of course I stayed there. I stayed there a very short period of time but of course I stayed -- the memo says I left immediately."
"Everything you just said was wrong," a stunned Scarborough stated. "Everything Donald Trump just said there was wrong. He claimed he didn't spend the night. It wasn't Comey claiming he didn't spend the night."
"Comey said he seemed guilty because he kept saying over and over again, he didn't spend the night," Scarborough continued before passing sentence on Trump.
"The president is unhinged. You can hear it, he's unhinged. He keeps contradicting himself," Scarborough said. "He's talking about documents being classified that nobody said were classified at the time that Comey let them out -- nobody."
"It's wonderful, but can you imagine nobody is there grabbing the phone from him?" co-host Mika Brzezinski quipped.
"I don't want anyone grabbing the phone from him," Michael Avenatti, the attorney for adult star Stormy Daniels interjected. "I want him to appear every morning on Fox & Friends. Please, mister president, keep going on."
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt will face tough questions from lawmakers in congressional budget hearings on Thursday over a long list of alleged ethical missteps plaguing his tenure.
The hearings will pose a critical test for Pruitt as the White House becomes increasingly frustrated by news reports on issues ranging from his heavy spending on first-class air travel and security, to his rental of a room in a Washington townhouse linked to an energy industry lobbyist.
Although President Donald Trump has expressed support for Pruitt for his work scaling back environmental regulations seen as overly burdensome to industry, White House sources have told Reuters that officials are becoming worried about the flow of charges against him.
There are nearly a dozen pending investigations into Pruitt with the EPA inspector general, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) and the White House Office of Management and Budget, as well as the U.S. House of Representatives oversight committee.
Recent findings by the GAO, which said the EPA violated the law by installing a $43,000 “privacy booth” in Pruitt’s office without notifying lawmakers first, are of particular concern to the West Wing, the White House sources said.
The EPA has defended Pruitt’s spending on travel and security, saying it has been crucial to protecting him from public threats and ensuring he can conduct confidential work, and have also pointed out that Pruitt’s lease for the room in Washington was around market rate.
EPA spokesman Jahan Wilcox said that Pruitt intends to use the hearings as an “opportunity to reiterate the accomplishments of President Trump’s EPA, which includes: working to repeal (President Barack) Obama’s Clean Power Plan and Waters of the United States, providing regulatory certainty, and declaring a war on lead - all while returning to Reagan-era staffing levels.”
White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the White House was evaluating the allegations against Pruitt. “We expect the EPA administrator to answer for them,” she said.
Democratic lawmakers that oppose Pruitt’s regulatory rollbacks have seized on his scandals, with 170 of them calling for his resignation. In recent days, five Republican Congress members have joined their ranks in calling for his ouster.
“I don’t care how sound your policies are, you just can’t treat the taxpayers in this country the way he apparently has,” Republican Senator John Kennedy told Reuters.
“I would be embarrassed to fly first-class like that. And I understand he’s in a job, that he’s made enemies, but 20 body men is a bit much,” Kennedy said.
Some Republican lawmakers have said they would support oversight hearings for Pruitt, including the Senate environment committee chair, John Barrasso, and third-ranking Republican Senator John Thune.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said at a news conference this week that he is still a Pruitt supporter but signaled that the EPA head’s Hill performance could determine if that support continued. “We’ll just see,” McConnell said. (Reporting By Valerie Volcovici and Richard Cowan; additional reporting by Steve Holland and Timothy Gardner; editing by Jonathan Oatis)
National Rifle Association (NRA) spokesperson Dana Loesch on Thursday blamed former President Barack Obama for the downfall of Ronnie Jackson, President Donald Trump's pick to lead the Department of Veterans Affairs.
In a statement on Thursday, Jackson said that he was withdrawing from consideration after Democratic senators received a number of complaints about him drinking on the job, wrecking a government vehicle while under the influence, and improperly dispensing medication to staff.
"At what point did they know about this concerning Ronnie Jackson?" Loesch said on Fox & Friends. "Apparently it wasn't troubling or concerning enough for them to do anything about it when he was serving on staff for former President Barack Obama. But now suddenly, a new president is in the White House and they have to what? I guess make up for looking the other way all of this time."
"I mean, that really reflects poorly on the character of the previous administration if only now they suddenly have an objection over this individual who served with the previous president. I think that's what the bigger question is. This administration showed that if there's a problem, they're going to handle it."
In fact, senators previously had no reason to scrutinize Jackson's record because his current job at the White House is not a cabinet-level position.
Fox News co-host Ainsley Earhardt argued that Jackson "should have stuck it out just to show [Democrats] that he's not going to cave."
"I still maintain that former President Obama didn't have a problem with Ronnie Jackson so why should President Trump?" Loesch added. "Maybe Democrats can explain that one to us."
The lawyer for porn actress Stormy Daniels suggested that a $1.6 million hush money payoff to a Playboy model was actually made on behalf of President Donald Trump -- and not a Republican donor.
Attorney Michael Avenatti appeared Thursday on MSNBC's "Morning Joe," where he gave a wide-ranging interview on the lawsuit against the president and a related criminal investigation of Trump's personal lawyer Michael Cohen -- and he said reporting on the case had missed an important detail.
"So, Mika, you are familiar with the fact that a week ago, Judge (Kimba) Wood ordered Michael Cohen's attorneys to disclose all of his clients for the last three years," Avenatti said, "and there were three clients listed -- three clients listed. Do you recall which three?"
Brzezinski listed Trump, Fox News host Sean Hannity and Republican donor Elliott Broidy -- but Avenatti said she was making the same mistake everyone else had.
"No, no, no," he said. "Mr. Trump, the Trump organization and Sean Hannity. Mr. Broidy was not disclosed in open court as one of Michael Cohen's clients."
Co-host Joe Scarborough asked the attorney what that meant.
"I think at some point we are going to find out, if in fact, the client in connection with the ($1.6 million) settlement was, in fact, Mr. Broidy. I'm going to leave it at that."
Avenatti wouldn't say it, but the implication seems clear.
Cohen negotiated a $1.6 million hush money payment to a Playboy model who became pregnant during an affair and then had an abortion.
News reports had identified Broidy as the client who agreed to pay the woman in installments over two years if she agreed to remain silent about the relationship -- but Avenatti said Cohen's lawyers ruled him out in open court.
That would leave Trump, or possibly Hannity, as the likely clients who arranged the payment.
Broidy resigned earlier this month as deputy finance chairman of the Republican National Committee after the payments were reported.
Sarah Kendzior explained to MSNBC's "Morning Joe" why President Donald Trump had exploited institutional weaknesses to set up a corrupt authoritarian government.
The journalist appeared Thursday morning to promote her new book of essays, "The View From Flyover Country," which collects her observations on how the recession ravaged communities and undermined civic institutions.
"I think those structural conditions set the template for Trump," Kendzior said. "I also have a PhD in anthropology, where I study authoritarian regimes, especially kleptocracies like Uzbekistan, where the president uses his position to enhance personal wealth."
She then made what could be seen as a subtle jab at co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, who frequently allowed Trump to call in phone interviews during the early days of his presidential campaign.
"Kind of combine all of that in an infotainment complex where the media was boosting Trump for ratings, trying to use that to enhance their own wealth, you end up with a situation that's both bad but predictable," Kendzior said.
Brzezinski agreed, saying that Kendzior had "nailed it," and Scarborough asked her to describe how economic inequality and access to education had contributed to Trump's victory.
"That's been going on for a long time," Kendzior said. "You've seen opportunity hoarding by elites, you see a pay to play system where people are expected to do unpaid labor, get expensive degrees and they're locked out of the most powerful industries. You see industries like politics or media, with people who aren't particularly talented or qualified, but have the connections and the network and the wealth in order to get their way in, and that leads to a really damaged discourse for the American public."
Scarborough agreed that institutional breakdowns contributed to Trump's election win, and Kendzior said the media should be held accountable.
"That doesn't completely explain or certainly excuse his rise," Kendzior said. "I think when somebody like Trump launches his campaign on hatred, when he launches it on targeting Mexicans on day one and going on to denigrate these groups, going on to lie, going on to embrace explicitly corrupt policies, people have an obligation to speak out. The media does, the GOP does. We still have that obligation today."
Brzezinski said she and her co-host had a special insight into Trump's rise, although she didn't seem to accept any blame for giving the long-shot candidate a platform.
"When you look at -- especially with your expertise, but also this book, we understand -- Joe and I, we understand on this set how he was elected, why he was elected, even thought he could be elected, which people didn't understand," Brzezinski said.
Kendzior, however, hadn't forgotten the free airtime the MSNBC hosts gave Trump before turning on him.
You’ve been drinking the fascist, white supremacist, white neo-Nazi milk … To be a successful antifa soldier, you have to become a soy boy.
In one of his satirical YouTube videos, alt-right commentator James Allsup suggests that what epitomises the anti-fascist, feminist, politically correct people he lambasts is that they drink soy instead of dairy milk.
Allsup is one of many members of the so-called alt-right, many of whom use social media and ironic humour to promote racist, sexist, antisemitic and other offensive views. Allsup himself attended last summer’s infamous Unite the Right gathering of neo-Nazis and white supremacists. His Twitter account was suspended last December on the grounds that his political views violated the company’s terms of use.
Allsup’s video is part of a viral flurry of tweets, memes, and videos depicting the battle between dairy and soy milk and all they represent.
The #MilkTwitter hashtag went viral after an incident that’s since been dubbed the “milk party”, in which a large gathering of white men descended on an anti-Trump art installation a few weeks after Trump’s inauguration. The men carried cartons of milk and voiced everything from off-colour taunts to explicitly racist, sexist, anti-Semitic and homophobic rants. After taking a swig of milk from his carton, one bare-chested man approached the camera and sneered. “An ice cold glass of pure racism,” he growled into the lens.
After that night, milk quickly went viral, joining the ranks of Pepe the Frog and the “okay” emoji as symbols of 21st century, post-Obama white supremacy. Pro-Trump supporters began carrying cartons of it to rallies and Richard Spencer and other prominent figures of the “alt-right” movement added milk-bottle emojis to their Twitter profiles. The #SoyBoy hashtag followed a few months later, going viral in the spring of 2017 and remains popular today.
For members of the alt-right, dairy milk symbolises strength of body and society; drinking it reinforces notions of white superiority and idealised visions of masculinity. Soy milk represents weakness, emasculation, and all things politically correct. The hashtags #MilkTwitter and #SoyBoy celebrate traditional gender norms and the “good old days” of white-dominated patriarchy, while ridiculing diversity and feminism.
There’s a long history of association between dairy milk and white supremacy, as legal scholar Andrea Freeman explores. Freeman traces the link back a century, with official US government documents from the 1920s suggesting a link between white people, milk-drinking and a superior intellect.
Similarly, sociologist Melanie DuPuis has described how milk was central to the construction of the modern Western nation state. The nutritionally “perfect” white drink was symbolically linked to the white-skinned bodies that were better able to digest it due to a genetic mutation known as lactase persistence. Early 20th century milk advertisements perpetuated this trope, often juxtaposing images of healthy-looking, light-skinned people with sickly-looking, darker-skinned ones. “By declaring milk perfect,” says DuPuis, “white northern Europeans announced their own perfection”.
Where dairy has symbolised white superiority, soy has long represented notions of weakness, nonwhiteness, and emasculation. Feminist and animal rights advocate Carol Adams has discussed how 19th century scholars justified British colonialism in part by dividing the world into “intellectually superior meat eaters and inferior plant eaters”. Asian cultures heavy in soy and rice consumption occupied the latter category.
In contemporary discussions, scientific studies linking phytoestrogens in soybeans to lower sperm count have been used – by alt-right trolls and mainstream media alike – to create a narrative that soy emasculates men who consume it.
“This is gonna fill you full of estrogen, this is gonna block all your testosterone,” Allsup pronounces on YouTube, holding up a carton of soy milk. “We’re gonna be drinking only soy milk, and it’s gonna flush all that testosterone – which is a word that means white supremacy – out of your body.” While Allsup obviously intends his video to be funny, screen shots from a Men’s Health article about soy’s potential to “undermine everything it means to be male” suggests he nevertheless takes the threat of soy seriously.
Taking alt-right irony seriously
Many dismiss the racist, sexist, anti-Semitic and homophobic rants on #MilkTwitter and #SoyBoy as being nothing more than ironic antics targeting politically correct “normies” who can’t take a joke. But irony and ambiguity are worth taking seriously: they are established strategies of alt-right trolls who seek to exploit Poe’s Law, the notion that it’s virtually impossible to distinguish between satire and sincerity online. Irony allows for extremist views to hide in plain sight – in the words of prominent neo-Nazi Andrew Anglin, “non-ironic Nazism masquerading as ironic Nazism”.
The danger of Poe’s Law, explained by Jason Wilson in an article for The Guardian about alt-right tactics, isn’t that satire may be mistaken for sincerity, but that “every ‘ironic’ repetition of far-right ideals contributes to a climate in which racism, misogyny, or Islamophobia is normalised”. Because of that, says Angela Nagle, who studies the alt-right’s online culture wars, “the best response is to stubbornly take the ‘alt-right’ at their word”.
Vegan vs. dairy masculinities
The strategy of those using #MilkTwitter and #SoyBoy is to mix a carefully constructed view of history and cherry-picked science to reinforce sexist and racist beliefs, while fostering a fear of contemporary shifts in power away from white males and towards women, people of colour, and those occupying space outside the cultural mainstream.
Vegans are often the target of #MilkTwitter and #SoyBoy taunts, with “the vegan agenda” being code for all things weak, effeminate and politically correct. Vegans, after all, drink soy (or other plant milk) instead of dairy, typically for ethical reasons related to caring about animals’ welfare – another female-coded trait.
The irony of #MilkTwitter and #SoyBoy casting vegan men as less masculine is that it is hard to imagine a more feminine-coded substance than estrogen-filled animal milk, coming from the breasts of female mammals. But in the identity politics of the alt-right, linking dairy milk to white supremacy, such complexities are taken lightly. After all, they are only joking, right?
President Donald Trump on Thursday went on a long, whiny rant on "Fox & Friends" after being asked about the withdrawal of his nominee for the secretary of Veterans Affairs.
When asked about VA secretary pick Ronny Jackson withdrawing his name from consideration, Trump angrily lashed out at Senate Democrats for allegedly obstructing all his nominees.
Among other things, Trump complained that "top of the line people" in the United States were "giving up their jobs" to come work for him, only to run into roadblocks by Senate Democrats.
Later in the interview, Trump seemed to throw his own lawyer Michael Cohen under the bus by distancing himself from his private business practices. Trump acknowledged that Cohen served as his attorney on some occasions but said his primary means of making money was through his own businesses.
"I have nothing to do with his business," Trump said, although he insisted that he didn't believe Cohen didn't do anything wrong. Trump also said that he had multiple lawyers working for him and that Cohen only performed a "tiny fraction" of the legal work done on his behalf.
When asked by Fox hosts why Cohen pleaded the fifth if he wasn't guilty of any crimes, Trump blamed Cohen's lawyers.
"He's got other things, he's got businesses," he said. "His lawyers probably told him to do that. I've been told I'm not involved."
Additionally, Trump also attacked former FBI Director James Comey once again and accused him of breaking the law.
"He is guilty of crimes!" Trump fumed.
Trump also claimed that Comey lied in his memos when he said Trump told him that he never stayed overnight in Russia during his trip to Moscow in the 2013 Miss Universe pageant.
"Of course I stayed in Russia overnight!" Trump said.
Watch Trump talk about Cohen's situation on "Fox & Friends" below.
With the possibility that White House doctor Ronny Jackson may withdraw his name for consideration to head up the embattled Veterans Administration, ex-White House ethics attorney Richard Painter lambasted the administration for its apparent failure to vet the doctor who has been battered with questions about his drinking and drug dispensing practices.
Speaking with CNN 's Don Lemon, Painter was unsparing in his criticism of the White House and whomever is responsible helping the president pick a suitable candidate.
“As an ethics person, how can the White House honestly say Dr. Jackson has undergone all his vetting?” Lemon suggested in reference to reports that Jackson crashed a car while driving drunk, abused female staffers and over prescribed drugs.
"I thought the White House hadn't done a good vetting job at all, " Painter replied. "They hadn't bother to find out what is going on in his personal background. If the White House had the slightest idea what they were doing, they would have known all of this before the nomination was made."
“Well it’s the same person who probably vetted Rob Porter, the guy who was accused of beating his wives,” Painter continued. “This White House doesn’t know what’s going when it comes to vetting any more than they do financial conflicts of interest. I don’t know whether somebody’s on drugs or whether somebody just doesn’t care.”
Marc Lamont Hill, a CNN contributor and professor of African-American studies, on Wednesday schooled ardent Donald Trump supporter Paris Dennard over his bogus claim that critics of Kanye West don't think he has a right to put out messages in favor of the president.
Lamont Hill joined host Don Lemon to discuss the friendly tweets shared between Trump and West on Wednesday—which included the rapper posting a selfie in a red “Make America Great Again” cap and claiming he and the president “are both dragon energy.”
“Remember when Kanye West said, out loud, ‘George Bush doesn't care about black people?’” Lemon asked. “Well, today Kanye West has a lot of people wondering if he cares about black people.”
Lemon asked Lamont Hill why West loves Donald Trump. Lamont Hill reminded women that previously West has said he would have voted for Trump in the 2016 election.
“He’s been shouting out Donald Trump for a long time,” Lamont Hill said. “I think it's weird.”
Lamont Hill called it “disappointing” to see West “go from someone who had the courage to stand up and say ‘George Bush doesn't care about black people,’ which was a courageous moment of protection and defense for black people and vulnerable people in general” to supporting someone whose campaign was steeped in “white supremacy, white nationalism.”
“People have a right to believe what they want,” Lamont Hill said. “Kanye has a right to believe what he wants. We have a right to hold him accountable for it. Because he's made so much money off vulnerable people, in the sense that he makes music for black people, he makes music for brown people, he makes music that poor people love, to then defend the president and to express love for a president whose policies operate against those interests to me is just disappointing. Kanye has a right to do it. I just don't agree with it.”
Turning to West’s live TV assertion that former president Bush “doesn’t care about black people,” Lemon asked Dennard whether West believes Trump cares about black people.
Dennard, who worked for Bush, described that moment as “a big deal to people who knew and know George W. Bush’s heart,” before complaining “it's offensive” to be called racist “especially when you know your heart and know what you've tried to do.”
“I haven't liked Kanye West since he said that about President Bush and I don't like his music now, but I will defend Kanye West—his right—to articulate his opinion on politics,” Dennard declared before adding that anyone who supports Trump is “automatically labeled a racist.”
“Can we elevate this conversation because that's not what it's really about?” Lemon asked.
“It's about the fact that Kanye West comes out and says something in support of this president, Chance the Rapper said something in support of this president, and all of a sudden Kanye loses millions of Twitter followers!” Dennard shot back.
“You're saying Kanye West has a right to say what he wants about Donald Trump,” Lamont Hill replied. “I agree. I don't think there's a large movement of people saying he doesn't have the right to say this. Of course he has free speech.”
“He shouldn't be demonized for it, is what I should say,” Dennard insisted.
After a back-and-forth, Lamont Hill explained why West isn’t being demonized “as much as people are challenging him on his perspective.”
“I think we do have a right to do that as well,” Lamont Hill said. “And I think we do have a right to unfollow people in the same way you said you don't buy Kanye stuff anymore after what he said about George Bush. People have a right to not mess with Kanye anymore after what he said about Trump. I don't think this a Democrat or Republican thing.”
Lamont Hill went on to describe concerns over West’s mental state “reasonable,” before clarifying that he doesn’t “think [West’s] mental health is in question because he supported Donald Trump.”
“In that case there's 50 million people whose mental health should be in check.” Lamont Hill said.
“That little snippet! That snippet!” Dennard protested.
“I'm saying you're not crazy for voting for Donald Trump because if that were true all the 50 million Americans who did were crazy!” Lamont Hill said. “I'm saying the opposite. I'm saying they're not crazy.”
Counselor to the president Kellyanne Conway lashed out at former FBI Director James Comey during a combative and evasive interview with CNN's Chris Cuomo.
The interview followed CNN anchor Anderson Cooper's town hall meeting with Comey.
"You saw that he was squirming around answering the tough questions by your colleague Anderson Cooper, maybe he wasn't expecting that," Conway suggested. "I believe Comey expected a hero's welcome from many in the mainstream media."
Cuomo repeatedly asked Conway why her distractions were relevant, but his requests were dodged.
As the host noted, accusations against "Drug Kingpin" Jackson include that he was "toxic," "abusive," "volatile," "prone to screaming tantrums" and "unethical" — to which the president said, "he reminds me of a young me."
"I like this guy," Colbert said in his best Trump impression. "Something about the cut of his jib."
When it comes to allegations that Jackson was so prone to over-prescribing narcotics that people in the White House called him "the candy man," the host demurred that the president's personal physician "was just following the Hippocratic oath."
"First, do no harm," Colbert said. "Second, who wants 'ludes?"
In a CNN town hall with Anderson Cooper, former FBI director James Comey answered questions from students and faculty at William & Mary law school on Wednesday.
He talked about his lasted book, "A Higher Loyalty" that details his experiences working with Donald Trump.
Cooper asked Comey if it was significant that Trump lied about not spending the night in Russia.
Comey revealed to the audience how to easily spot a lie.
"It’s always significant when someone lies, especially about something you didn’t ask about,” Comey said.
