al franken resignation speech At noon on Thursday, Senator Al Franken addressed the Senate for the last time, giving a half-hour resignation speech that touched on everything from voter fraud to climate change but held an overarching message — that the Trump administration is chipping away at the pillars supporting American democracy.
MSNBC's Joe Scarborough and Donny Deutsch were disturbed by UN ambassador Nikki Haley's "mob boss" threats against the United Nations.
Haley issued a direct threat Thursday, saying the U.S. may not continue funding the organization if other nations voted to condemn the Trump administration's decision to relocate its Israeli embassy in Jerusalem.
"When did we become the bad guys?" Deutsch said. "You know, I'm listening to that speech, and I'm saying, 'No, that's the bad guys talking, bad guys talk that way.' We're not going to give you aid if you don't blindly agree with us, we'll cut you off? When did this happen?"
Scarborough said the threat was both troubling and short-sighted.
"You know, you sit and listen to Nikki Haley, a representative of the United States of America, and it's breathtaking that she would actually threaten to cut off aid and support, and humanitarian aid," Scarborough said.
"By the way, all those things, you talk about PR, all of those things in the end help us," he continued. "This is what people like Donald Trump, and I guess Nikki Haley and others do not understand. We don't give foreign aid and humanitarian aid just to make ourselves feel good. Those dollars are strategic to allow the United States to continue to have soft power across the globe, and you just aren't smart if you believe that threatening that over -- let's, remember what this was. This was a non-binding resolution."
Scarborough said the resolution carried no weight, but Haley's speech needlessly antagonized both allies and adversaries.
"Donald Trump and Nikki Haley engaged in something between school yard taunt and a mob boss' threat, and they did it as our representatives," Scarborough said.
Scarborough said the speech ultimately undermined American foreign policy interests, and Deutsch wondered why Republicans refused to challenge Trump on any issues of importance.
"I watch Nikki Haley, and I bring it back to Paul Ryan," Deutsch said. "As much as I am disgusted by Trump, the people that offend me more are are the people blindly following, who you know are inherently decent people (but) have just kind of left their moral compass at the door as the puppeteer moves them. I just think back to Paul Ryan's smug victory lap on something that as a fiscal conservative, a guy years ago, you would say, this is not in his core. You look at Nikki Haley, she's a decent person -- that's not in her core."
Writer and expert on authoritarian regimes Sarah Kendzior appeared on MSNBC Thursday and blasted Republicans for their submissiveness to President Donald Trump.
She and host Joy Reid discussed the bizarre turn-around of Sen. Lindsey Graham who went from calling Trump a "kook" to attacking the media for trying to "label the guy some kind of kook not fit to be president."
The uncomfortably effusive praise of Trump by Vice President Mike Pence and members of the cabinet, as well as an unctuous speech by long-serving Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) led Kendzior to speculate that Trump might even be blackmailing some officials.
"The RNC was hacked," Kendzior said. "We don't know what happened with those e-mails. We know that Lindsey Graham's personal e-mails were also hacked and we know that Trump has a long track record of blackmailing and threatening those who he sees as his political opponents. That goes back throughout his entire career."
Kendzior reminded Reid that many Republicans benefitted in 2016 from millions of dollars of dark money donated by Kremlin-aligned Russian nationals living in the U.S. and that Graham is one of those politicians.
"I think what concerns me most is that they seem afraid," she said of the Republicans gathered to heap compliments on Trump this week. "They seem unable to stand up for themselves. They lack all dignity."
"Trump has berated them, he has insulted them," Kendzior said. "He's often gone after their wives and their family members, saying terrible things and yet they prostrate themselves to him. What kind of leader are you? What kind of man are you?"
Rumors have long swirled about the never-married Graham's sexual orientation. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee insinuated earlier this year that he has concerns about Graham's sexuality.
When the South Carolina senator was proving to be insufficiently loyal to Trump in March, Huckabee said, "I sometimes wonder what uniform he puts on each morning when goes out to the field to play… and I’m not just talking about the partisan uniform.”
Watch the video, embedded below:
"AM Joy" host Joy Reid sat in for Lawrence O'Donnell on Thursday's edition of "The Last Word," where she mocked President Donald Trump and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley for threatening the U.N. General Assembly in vain about moving the capital of Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
On Tuesday, Haley admonished United Nations delegates to remember that the U.S. would be "taking names" of countries that did not support a resolution declare Jerusalem the capital.
"And we can sum up the General Assembly's response to that threat in two words," Reid said before playing the famous clip of rapper Ice Cube from the film "Friday," in which he says, "Bye, Felicia."
"That is the two-line classic dis from the movie, 'Friday,'" Reid explained, "denoting when your threats are meaningless because people are just DONE with you."
The resolution failed by a massive margin, with even Canada voting against so as not to look like a U.S. "puppet."
CNN counterterrorism analyst Philip Mudd said that this marks a low point for the U.S. on the global stage.
“Twenty-eight countries said we’re a bunch of idiots,” Mudd said. “I think the rest of the world is laughing at us.”
"(T)his is diplomatic prostitution,” he said. “We’re telling people unless you vote with us, we’re not going to give you money, and if your heart doesn’t agree with American policies, we’re not going to support you in terms of U.S. aid.”
Watch the video, embedded below:
Rachel Maddow said on Thursday night that documents handed over by to special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation by White House lawyer Don McGahn could potentially ruin President Donald Trump's alibi about .
Maddow was referring to revelations in Foreign Policy magazine by reporter Murray Waas that in McGahn's first days in the White House, he "researched federal law dealing both with lying to federal investigators and with , a centuries-old federal law that prohibits private citizens from negotiating with foreign governments."
"There are White House records that show the White House counsel knew that Flynn lied to the FBI, that he was aware that was a criminal act and that he conveyed that information to the president," said Maddow.
"That is going to be like an anvil falling on one side of the scale as people try to balance considerations, here, about whether or not the president is ever going to face criminal liability for obstruction of justice," she explained.
Watch the video, embedded below:
The Grand Rapids, Michigan police officer who handcuffed 11-year-old Honestie Hodges at gunpoint earlier this month will not receive any internal disciple, the department announced Wednesday.
As The Washington Post reported Thursday evening, the move to not punish the officer who handcuffed the 11-year-old black girl while searching for her 40-year-old white aunt comes amid major backlash in Grand Rapids -- including by the city's police chief.
In bodycamera footage of the incident, the officer tells Hodges to put her hands (which were raised above her head) behind her back -- and then she began screaming.
"You listen to the 11-year-old’s response, it makes my stomach turn,” Grand Rapids Police Chief David Rahinsky told reporters in the aftermath of the December 6 decable. “It makes me physically nauseous."
Rahinsky initially said he believed the officers involved acted inappropriately and should instead have "asked the 11-year-old to back to you, take her behind the car and have a very different conversation with her."
Nevertheless, in a statement posted on the GRPD's Facebook page on Wednesday, the police chief said "no discipline will be issued."
Though GRPD's statement outlines ways they hope to improve relations with the city's African-American community, including their "Honestie policy" that requires police to meet the children in the neighborhoods on their beats, members of the city's community remain unsettled by the way the scandal unfolded.
"We are dismayed that there would even be the possibility of no disciplinary action on behalf of an officer, especially since the process of investigation and discipline is totally controlled by the Grand Rapids Police Department,” Rev. Jerry Bishop of LifeQuest Ministries told Grand Rapids news station WOOD-TV.
You can watch bodycamera footage of the incident below.
Bodycam footage shows Grand Rapids, Michigan, police holding an innocent 11-year-old black girl at gunpoint, handcuffing her. This is horrifying. Her screams break my heart..@ShaunKing pic.twitter.com/TlUGQuo2BL
— Remove Trump Now (@KaniJJackson) December 12, 2017
In a panel discussion on Thursday, MSNBC commentators and host Chris Matthews derided a Wednesday White House press conference that featured Republicans fawning over the president in celebration of their newly-passed tax plan.
"It was like a scene out of Julius Caesar yesterday on the south lawn of the White House," Matthews said. "One by one Republican leaders lined up to praise his eminence, the imperious Donald Trump."
Yamiche Alcindor, an MSNBC analyst and Capitol Hill reporter at The New York Times said that even the president could tell the performance smelled fishy.
"Eleven people in total, I think, went up there and stood up there and talked about how great he was," she said, "when we know as Capitol Hill reporters you get eye rolls from a lot of these Republicans when you try to ask them off the record what they think about this president."
"Most of the time they're highly embarrassed by what he's tweeted that morning," Alcindor continued, "so to have Orrin Hatch up there calling him 'possibly the best president ever' -- [Trump] knows there's some flattering going on there and that it's not quite genuine."
Never-Trump conservative Charlie Sykes had even stronger words for his fellow Republicans.
"I get that they were excited, I get that they like tax cuts," he said, "but why do you actually have this ritualized fluffing of the orange god-king?"
While it's clear that their heaped praise is a "tactic" to "keep [Trump] in line," Sykes said he felt like warning his party mates as he was watching their press conference.
"Do you understand you're doing this in public, we can see what you're doing here?" he joked. "I mean, this is great, Paul [Ryan], you got your tax cuts. But have a little pride, just a little bit of dignity left when all this is over."
You can watch the entire segment below, via MSNBC.
Former communications director to President George W. Bush's White House Nicolle Wallace expressed her incredulity on Thursday that Republicans are now attacking "Republican-led law enforcement agencies" in their zeal to protect President Donald Trump from the Russia probe by discrediting the FBI and special counsel Robert Mueller.
“I can’t get my brain around the insurrection in the Republican party against Republican-led law enforcement agencies,” she said. “I can’t shove the round pegs into the square boxes.”
"And unlike you," Wallace said, pointing to John Podhoretz, "it's driving me crazy."
Watch the video, embedded below:
CNN counterterrorism analyst Phil Mudd on Thursday slammed Donald Trump and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley over the administration’s threat to withhold aid funding from the United Nations.
The UN General Assembly voted Thursday to condemn Trump’s decision to officials recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel—prompting Haley to promise the United States “will remember this day” and hold the offending nations accountable.
Former CIA Director John Brennan broke his Twitter silence to slam Trump’s UN threat, calling it emblematic of “narcissistic, vengeful, autocrats.” Mudd’s message to Breann was to “settle down.”
“He was a great GIA director, I served beside him at the CIA,” Mudd began. “Settle down. Let me explain why: there’s a rare humorous moment here on ‘The Situation Room.’”
“We're going to walk out when 128 countries—including the leading countries around the world—say, ‘You, the Americans, are a bunch of morons,’ and threaten them?” Mudd asked rhetorically. “You know what everybody else is saying, Wolf? ‘You've got to be kidding.’”
“Twenty-eight countries said we're a bunch of idiots,” Mudd added, calling the Trump administration’s threat “a joke.”
“I don't think we need to get excited,” Mudd argued. "I think the rest of the world is laughing at us.”
Asked by Blitzer if he thinks Trump will actually cut funding for nations, Mudd replied, “No way!”
“Not a chance,” Mudd continued. “… Do you think the president's going to get on the phone and say because of one vote that's non-binding in the U.N. we're going to back down on our partnership with you as you kill ISIS partners in Egypt? That is not going to happen.”
“Let me be blunt here, Wolf: this is diplomatic prostitution,” Mudd said. “We’re telling people unless you vote with us, we're not going to give you money, and if your heart doesn't agree with American policies, we're not going to support you in terms of U.S. aid.”
“It's not going to happen,” he added.
Watch below:
On Thursday's edition of "Deadline: White House" on MSNBC, host Nicolle Wallace played video of from the uncomfortably effusive praise that Vice President Mike Pence and members of the presidential Cabinet heaped on President Donald Trump.
"Yikes," said Wallace after the clip before pointing out that the Washington Post reported that Pence praised Trump once every 12 seconds for three minutes.
"I don't even do that for my 5-year-old," said Wallace, "who I think is really great."
"First of all, I think I need a shower after hearing that," said New York Times chief national correspondent Mark Leibovich, who went on to say, "It's a little weird, there's no question about it."
"These people privately speak very differently," he said, contrasting the the sycophancy on display Wednesday.
Watch the video, embedded below:
Virginia House of Delegates candidate Shelly Simonds was thrust into the national spotlight twice this week -- first for apparently winning a very tight local legislative race by a single vote on Tuesday, and again on Wednesday when a judge threw that victory out over a "questionable" ballot that had both candidates names filled in, resulting in a tie.
In a Thursday appearance on MSNBC with host Ali Velshi, Simonds described the "stunt" that led to her single-vote victory becoming a tie.
After the recount, which Democrats and Republicans alike signed off on, Simonds said her "opponent really pulled a stunt the next day."
"They came in and said from front of the judges they wanted a re-do on one ballot," she described. "If we were going to be pulling out individual ballots, you can believe me, we would have had a few we would have wanted the judges to look at as well."
The deciding ballot, as pictured above, shows both the ovals next to both Simonds and David Yancey, her Republican opponent, filled in. The oval next to Simonds' name is crossed out, leading the three-judge panel who reviewed it to call it a vote for the Republican incumbent Yancey.
"It was really very unfair that the judges looked at one ballot that my opponents' team had pulled out," Simonds said.
Watch Simonds discuss her "rollercoaster" week below, via MSNBC.
Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) on Thursday led a group of 171 Democrats in condemnation of right-wing attempts to smear special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation.
"We have decided we will not stand by and allow Fox News and right-wing Republicans to defy the rule of law and create their own rules to interfere with a legitimate investigation under the Constitution of the United States," Waters said during her #ProtectMueller press conference.
"We will be vigorously working to deny the brazen attempts to destroy special counsel Robert Mueller and his investigation," the California congresswoman continued.
In a letter addressed to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein signed by the large cadre of congressional Democrats, Waters implored the Justice Department to go further in ensuring Mueller and his team "be allowed to continue his investigation – unfettered by political influence or threats to his authority."
Waters noted in the letter that when Mueller was first appointed, Republican leadership were tacitly in favor of him leading the investigation.
"I don't think many people are saying Mueller is a biased partisan," House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) told the Washington Examiner in July 2017. "He's really, sort of, anything but."
"Despite Special Counsel Mueller’s record of integrity," the letter continued, "the right-wing media, some Republican Members of Congress and Donald Trump, himself, have attempted to advance a false narrative that Special Counsel Mueller’s investigation is biased, and some have advocated for Mr. Mueller’s removal."
Watch Waters' press conference with leading congressional Democrats below.
Monday afternoon Santa Ana police were able to stop a rape attempt thanks to a good Samaritan who was concerned for a woman's wellbeing.
According to KTLA news, a man had offered to drive the victim to her local Wells Fargo Bank. When she got into the car he told her that he wanted to have sex with her. When she refused he drove to the alley and duct-taped her head.
Taylor O'Neill was trying to get to work when he saw the truck blocking his way. He honked several times but the truck didn't move. So, he got out of his car to confront the man. That's when heard screams and saw the alleged victim inside.
"I saw her with her face duct-taped and him on top of her choking her," he told KTLA. "That's when I tried to open the door and banged on the window to get her out of there, get her safe, and deal with him later."
With the driver distracted, the woman was able to unlock the door and escape. The driver attempted to flee the scene but not before O'Neill snapped a photo of the truck, complete with the license plate number. He stayed with the "really scared" victim until police could arrive.
They were able to find suspect 27-year-old Jorge Alejandro Cruz de Armas and arrested him Wednesday. He's expected to be charged with "assault with the intent to rape" and "attempted rape by force or fear."
In a press release from the police department, O'Neill was referred to as a "good Samaritan" for stopping the attempted rape. Cpl. Anthony Bertagna revealed that the perpetrator put the victim into a chokehold and attempted to strangle her while covering her mouth with duct tape. They believe she likely passed out because she didn't remember having the duct tape put on her face.
Police believe the accused may have done this before because the crime was "methodical and precise."
Watch the report below via KTLA:
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