Sen. David Perdue (R-GA) was ripped on MSNBC as a crook by his Democratic challenger on Friday.
Joy Reid, host of "The ReidOut" on MSNBC, interviewed Democrat Jon Ossoff, who had harsh words for his Republican opponent.
"David Perdue is like the cartoon version of a corrupt oligarch," Ossoff charged. "Profiting from tragedy while opposing help for ordinary people. This is a guy who lives on a private island, hasn't held a single town hall meeting in six years, openly sells meetings to lobbyists for corporate PAC checks, votes to throw people off their healthcare, opposed even the first round of $1,200 stimulus checks and he treats his Senate office like it is his E-trade account."
"He has got to go," Ossoff declared. "And how directly are we taking it on? Absolutely directly. The people of Georgia need to know that David Perdue is a crook -- and we're making sure they know it!"
Breitbart News -- the far-right online publication once led by Steve Bannon -- hilariously identified a Daily Show producer as the host of "Hardball" on MSNBC.
"Hardball" -- which was cancelled in February -- was named after a 1988 book by Chris Matthews, the host of the show.
But in a post complaining about the media holding Republicans to account for going along with Donald Trump's conspiracy theories about the 2020 election, Breitbart writer Joshua Klein mistakenly referred to "Daily Show" producer Matt Negrin as the host of the canceled show.
Investors pushed stock markets higher Friday with US equities ending at all-time highs as continued optimism over vaccines and signs of progress on new US stimulus offset worries about rising coronavirus cases.
All three major US stock indices finished at fresh records after European bourses also posted gains.
Oil prices also climbed to nine-month highs following the latest production agreement by petroleum exporters.
The rally on Wall Street came even following government data showing the jobs recovery stalled, as US employers added just 245,000 new jobs in November.
And though the unemployment rate dipped to 6.7 percent from 6.9 percent, the lowest since the pandemic struck, that was due to Americans leaving the workforce.
Noting that new Covid-19 cases are "raging" in the US, FHN Financial's Chris Low warned that "job growth will be sluggish for the next three or four months, minimum."
The United States recorded more than 210,000 new cases in a 24-hour stretch to Thursday evening, and more than 2,900 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University.
Still, Low said US approval of the first coronavirus vaccine could come as soon as next week.
And analysts said the weak jobs data provides further impetus for Congress to enact a new stimulus package, and Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi have revived efforts to hash out a deal for more aid.
President-elect Joe Biden reiterated the need for immediate support, saying "if we don't act now, the future will be very bleak. Americans need help and they need it now."
Neil Wilson, chief market analyst at Markets.com, said the soft employment report "is seen as a positive for stocks since it ought to incentivize Congress to pass a stimulus bill this year."
Brexit talks ongoing
Meanwhile, the British pound gyrated as traders monitored the latest in months-long talks on a post-Brexit trade deal between London and the European Union.
British and EU negotiators broke off their talks without agreement Friday and handed off the task of clearing the logjam to Prime Minister Boris Johnson and EU chief Ursula von der Leyen.
The leaders will hold a telephone call on Saturday after their envoys Michel Barnier and David Frost broke up after an arduous week of day and night meetings without a breakthrough.
Oil prices ended at their highest level since March, with Brent futures close to $50 a barrel, after OPEC and its oil-producing allies struck a deal on Thursday to offer flexibility over changes to production in the coming months.
But "obvious divisions between members of the group mean the question marks over the future direction of oil supply are as large as ever," said Caroline Bain, chief commodities economist at Capital Economics.
Key figures around 2200 GMT
New York - Dow: UP 0.8 percent at 30,218.26 (close)
New York - S&P 500: UP 0.9 percent at 3,699.12 (close)
New York - Nasdaq: UP 0.7 percent at 12,464.23 (close)
London - FTSE 100: UP 0.9 percent at 6,550.23 (close)
Frankfurt - DAX 30: UP 0.4 percent at 13,298.96 (close)
Paris - CAC 40: UP 0.6 percent at 5,609.15 (close)
EURO STOXX 50: UP 0.6 percent at 3,539.27 (close)
Tokyo - Nikkei 225: DOWN 0.2 percent at 26,751.24 (close)
Hong Kong - Hang Seng: UP 0.4 percent at 26,835.92 (close)
Shanghai - Composite: UP 0.1 percent at 3,444.58 (close)
Euro/dollar: DOWN at $1.2110 from $1.2144 at 2200 GMT
Pound/dollar: DOWN at $1.3423 from $1.3450
Dollar/yen: UP at 104.19 yen from 103.84 yen
Euro/pound: DOWN at 90.21 pence from 90.29 pence
West Texas Intermediate: UP 1.4 percent at $46.26 per barrel
Brent North Sea crude: UP 1.1 percent at $49.25 per barrel
The results came the day after Giuliani spearheaded the campaign's "elite strike force" at a press conference alleging voter fraud, though the group's wild, false theories were ultimately overshadowed by an unfortunate application of hair coloring.
Allen, a close Giuliani aide for more than a year who accompanies the former New York mayor to most events, told Salon in a text message that she began her quarantine on Nov. 20.
"It's been rough but I'm doing much better today," Allen wrote, adding: "I would say I definitely had more than mild symptoms."
Allen told Salon she had attended that press conference, after which other attendees in Giuliani's orbit announced they had contracted the deadly coronavirus.
When it comes to exposure to the new coronavirus, the president's pro bono personal attorney has apparently enjoyed a streak of good fortune. A number of characters in Giuliani's circles have tested positive for the virus, and the former mayor has recently been in a number of rooms with individuals who later announced a positive diagnosis.
One of them was Giuliani's adult son, Andrew, who holds a vaguely defined White House post. Like Allen, he tested positive for COVID-19 the day after attending the Nov. 19 press event.
Another press event attendee, longtime Trump associate and 2020 campaign adviser Boris Epshteyn, announced his positive diagnosis on Nov. 25 just ahead of Giuliani's trip to Gettysburg. Trump was also slated to travel to Gettysburg but canceled the trip, citing the positive test.
Earlier in the month, Giuliani spent election night at the White House, after which a number of fellow attendees announced positive tests, including several top West Wing and campaign aides.
One of the president's closest advisers, White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, who was in attendance that evening, told associates that he had tested positive sometime after the election, though it was not clear when, CNN reported on Nov. 6.
Meadows had also quarantined after possible exposure at the conservative CPAC conference in late February. In October, the top aide had accompanied a COVID-positive Trump on his helicopter trip to Walter Reed hospital, where Meadows also stayed overnight.
CNN reported that campaign aide Nick Trainer, who manages election data and spent election night in the executive mansion, also tested positive.
White House political director Brian Jack tested positive shortly after the election night event, as well, along with one of his aides. So did political adviser Healy Baumgardner, a Trump ally who had attended the party as Giuliani's personal guest.
The outgoing president's eldest adult child, Donald Trump Jr., was also present that night. Don Jr. disclosed his diagnosis on Nov. 20 before emerging from quarantine a week and a half later.
Giuliani also appeared to have skated unscathed through an apparent White House superspreader weekend in late September, after which at least 25 people in Trump's orbit contracted the virus, including the president, first lady Melania Trump and their 14-year-old son, Barron.
That weekend, Giuliani joined campaign manager Bill Stepien and former Gov. Chris Christie, R-N.J., to prep Trump ahead of the first presidential debate. The group convened at the White House several times, after which everyone but Giuliani tested positive. Christie was later hospitalized.
After an Oct. 5 appearance on Fox News, in which Giuliani coughed heavily, the man formerly known as "America's Mayor" told Salon that he had tested negative and had "no symptoms." Allen, his aide, later confirmed multiple further negative test results.
On Oct. 7, Giuliani told Bloomberg TV that as a preventive measure following the extended exposure, he had been taking hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malarial treatment which has not been shown to be effective against the coronavirus and may increase the risk of heart failure. It is unclear when he stopped taking the drug.
President Donald Trump is trashing Georgia's GOP governor even worse in private than on Twitter, according to a new report by CNN.
"In the politics lead today, Georgia Republicans say that they are concerned about President Trump's planned rally tomorrow in Georgia," CNN's Jake Tapper reported. "They worry that it could actually discourage Republican voter turnout. Two critical Senate runoff elections will determine if Republicans or Democrats control the Senate -- and the prospects for much of President-elect Biden's agenda."
CNN correspondent Jeremy Diamond reported the latest on the situation.
"Two sources telling my colleague Kaitlan Collins that President Trump blasted Georgia Republican Gov. Brian Kemp as a moron and a nutjob during a recent phone call," Diamond reported. "And it's because of these comments that my sources tell me that Republicans are on edge ahead of the president's visit tomorrow, concerned that more of these kinds of attacks could do more harm than good."
Donald Trump appears poised to accomplish the impossible: He’s about to normalize Senator Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma, one of the most distant stars in the galaxy of wingnut Republican politics.
Trump continued in a late-night tweet Thursday to jab at Inhofe over the ultra-conservative’s failure-- as chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee -- to secure a couple of Trump’s pet grievances in the National Defense Authorization Act of 2021. The pouter-in-chief is demanding that an off-topic provision attacking social media companies -- by removing some liability protections -- be included in the annual defense bill.
Trump had previously threatened to veto the bill over a provision that would remove the names of Confederate military officers from 10 U.S. military installations. Slavery, of course, is one of the few U.S. institutions Trump has failed to attack during the past four years.
Here’s Trump latest threat if he doesn’t get his way:
What’s especially stunning about Trump calling out Inhofe is that the right-wing senator carried Trump’s water as far as he could in humoring his grievances. As recently as November 19, the military newspaper Stars and Stripes reported that Inhofe was blocking the defense bill over the base renaming issue.
And though Inhofe claims to have mollified the president with compromise language assigning the renaming to a commission, he apparently didn’t have so much luck in calming Trump’s rage against social-media giants. Trump is demanding repeal of a tech liability provision-- known colloquially as “Section 230” -- to be included in the unrelated defense bill. Even Inhofe couldn’t come through on that, despite his own sympathy to the cause.
Inhofe told The Hill that he’d discussed Section 230 with Trump:
“Pressed on what the president’s reaction was, Inhofe demurred but added that Trump “doesn’t like 230 and I don’t like 230. First of all 230 has nothing to do with the military. And I agree with his sentiments we ought to do away with 230 but you can’t do it in this bill. That’s not a part of the bill,” Inhofe told reporters.”
Obviously, that wasn’t good enough for the raging Trump, who is lashing out hourly at even some of his most loyal supporters if they fail to do the last thing he wants before getting perp-walked out of the White House. By imperiling the defense bill, Trump would be sending Republicans home to explain, over the holidays, why they couldn’t get continued funding -- including pay raises -- for the nation’s military.
Inhofe is 86 -- albeit with the politics of a man of 186 -- and it’s safe to say this is one of the first times in his 34-year career in Congress (including 26 in the Senate) that he has found himself under attack from his right flank. Most groups that measure Congressional voting records don’t consider Inhofe to have a right flank.
But the extremist senator comes across as uncommonly normal on his Twitter feed:
Inhofe prides himself on working across the aisle on some issues, but the notion that he is getting attacked by Trump for not holding firm to far-right talking points is pretty amazing. While Inhofe has hardly crusaded for reason on Trump’s obsessions with social media and revering the Confederacy, he is among the last senators to look all RINO snowflake on any topic with a hint of red meat to it.
For example, Inhofe’s preeminent claim to wingnut fame is his stature as the Republicans’ preeminent climate denier, which is saying something. Inhofe famously threw a snowball on the Senate floor in 2015 to disprove the existence of global warming, prompting the normally docile NBC weatherman Al Roker to exclaim, “What a moron!”
If the title of Inhofe’s book, “The Greatest Hoax: How the Global Warming Conspiracy Threatens Your Future,” doesn’t speak for itself, this passage from Inhofe’s 2005 Senate speech does: “Global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people. It was true when I said it before, and it remains true today. Perhaps what has made this hoax so effective is that we hear over and over that the science is settled and there is a consensus that, unless we fundamentally change our way of life by limiting greenhouse gas emissions, we will cause catastrophic global warming. This is simply a false statement.”
Now, that’s the Inhofe who people have come to know over the years, the one whose open hatred of the LGBTQIA community makes Mike Pence look like a Pride festival organizer in comparison. Among his bigotry credits, Inhofe favors a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage, refuses to hire openly gay staffers, stalled the appointment in 1999 for the nation’s first openly gay ambassador-- for being gay -- has voted against adding sexual orientation to the list of protected classes for hate crimes and protested loudly over military members marching in a San Diego Pride Parade.
Inhofe also is a fervent opponent of affirmative action and actually voted to repeal the Disadvantaged Business Enterprise Program. In 2009, he said the “birthers” slandering President Barack Obama “had a point.” But not even those wingnut chops are enough to satiate Trump as he rages over not getting his way about kicking social media in a defense bill.
Inhofe just won reelection to his fifth term this year, which means he’d be 92 if he goes for it again in 2026. He better expect a primary if he runs.
During a segment on Fox Business this Friday, Trump aide Peter Navarro got some pushback from host Liz Claman, who pointed out to him that a whole litany of judges don't share his view that the 2020 election was rife with mass voter fraud.
"Everything I've seen, Liz, tells me that this election was stolen," he said. "Everything I'm seeing across six states, I mean, to the point..."
"Why do judges not see that, Peter?" Claman interjected. "More than 24 judges do not see that."
Lieutenant Governor of Pennsylvania John Fetterman revealed Friday that some Republican officials choosing to stand up against the election fraud claims heralded by President Donald J. Trump are receiving "death threats."
"It must be said: it is tough being a Republican and telling the truth about this election," Fetterman said. "Many officials are even getting death threats- just look at Georgia. Virtually all are threatened with a primary for simply acknowledging that this was a fair, free election."
He also retweeted that "Pennsylvania Republican lawmakers, including House Speaker Bryan Cutler and House Majority Leader Kerry Benninghoff, have sent a letter to the state’s congressional delegation urging them to object to Pennsylvania’s Electoral College votes on Jan. 6."
The White House is walking a tight-rope in Georgia as Donald Trump continues to falsely claim he won the re-election while attempting to convince Republicans to turn out and vote to keep control of the U.S. Senate as a check on the incoming Democratic administration.
Georgia is hosting two U.S. Senate runoff campaigns in January. If Democrats win both, the body will be tied 50-50 -- allowing Vice President-elect Kamala Harris the opportunity to cast the tie-breaking vote.
President Donald Trump's former personal attorney and fixer, Michael Cohen, has had a lot to say about the president's response to the 2020 election results — stressing, during an interview with New York Magazine's Jeff Wise, that Trump's bogus claims of widespread voter fraud are a cynical way for him to get supporters to donate money to him. And Cohen offered more insights on Trump's post-election histrionics when he was interviewed for journalist Brian Karem's "Just Ask the Question" podcast.
According to Cohen, Trump has "done the math" and realizes that there is still a lot of money to be made by firing up his MAGA supporters.
Trump's former fixer told Karem, "He's very bright when it comes to figuring out angles and money. But he knows he can't go back to real estate, and he knows he has to leave the White House in January. But if he can get a large enough number of his supporters to send him money, then he's set. That's what he wants."
According to CNN's Brianna Keilar, Trump has raised over $170 million since the election for his so-called Election Defense Fund — and Keilar, on Wednesday, stressed that 75% of those funds are being shared with his Save America PAC, which she slammed as a "slush fund."
Cohen has made it abundantly clear that he voted for President-elect Joe Biden, and that he will be glad to see Trump leave the White House on January 20. The former Trump attorney told Karem, "I want him to leave and keep his mouth shut for the next four years. The guy is so ignorant and arrogant. He billed himself as a builder, and he's done nothing. He couldn't even get an infrastructure bill passed."
Karem, in an article published by the conservative website The Bulwark on Friday, noted that working for Trump in the past led to the three-year prison sentence that Cohen is still serving.
"In all the talk about which Trump cronies might receive pardons in his final lame-duck weeks, there is one name that never comes up: Michael Cohen," Karem explained. "After a dozen years as Trump's lawyer and fixer, Cohen famously broke with his boss in 2018. He pleaded guilty to tax fraud, bank fraud, campaign finance violations and lying to Congress. He was sentenced to three years in federal prison, although because of the pandemic, he was released this past May to serve out his sentence under house arrest."
In his Bulwark piece, Karem echoed Cohen's observation that Trump's post-election activities and claims of widespread voter fraud are financially motivated.
"Trump's feverish, delusional, insane and perhaps seditious denial of his loss, coupled with his ability to twist people into a knot and partnered with idiots like (attorney Rudy) Giuliani and most of the White House senior staff, have produced an environment ripe for violence," Karem warned. "Trump doesn't care — as long as it doesn't get too violent. He wants to protect his bottom line, but he's never been able to contain the Frankenstein monster he's created: triggered racists, sycophants and marginalized Americans who believe Trump has given them permission to access the very worst versions of themselves and threaten the world around them for perceived and often erroneous indiscretions."
President Donald Trump on Friday escalated his efforts to install loyalists in key positions before President-elect Joe Biden takes office in January.
"The White House removed nine members of the Pentagon's Defense Business Board on Friday and installed people loyal to President Donald Trump in their place, including presidential allies Corey Lewandowski and David Bossie," Politico reported Friday. "The firings marked the latest effort by the Trump administration to clean out the Defense Department in the final weeks of the president's term."
Lewandowski served as one of Trump's 2016 campaign managers; Bossie was the deputy campaign manager on Trump's 2016 bid.
The replacements came after Trump abruptly fired the previous members of the board.
Politico interviewed Michael Bayer, who was the board chair until being fired on Friday.
"A number of board members have been terminated with a form letter. In my experience, I was very surprised that the White House would, at the eleventh hour, adjust an advisory board that for 19 years has had a record of nonpartisan support with the department," Bayer told Politico. "This kind of a move really will weigh heavily on people on the future and their willingness to serve on these outside advisory boards if they're going to be subjected to political loyalty tests. It's unprecedented. I'm just saddened."
President Donald Trump continued to complain about the press on Friday -- while refusing to concede that he lost the 2020 presidential election to President-elect Joe Biden.
Since the 2020 election, Trump has been frustrated that the press has accurately reported that there is no evidence to back up Trump's conspiracy theories about the 2020 election. Trump has even been waging war on Fox News, urging his supporters to flip the channel to NewsMax or OAN.
"The only thing more RIGGED than the 2020 Presidential Election is the FAKE NEWS SUPPRESSED MEDIA," Trump argued. His contention that the election was "rigged" is false and he did not explain how the news was both "fake" and "suppressed."
"No matter how big or important the story, if it is even slightly positive for 'us', or negative for 'them', it will not be reported!" Trump claimed, without offering any evidence.
A reoccurring theme of Trump's presidency is how he confuses any negative story as "fake news" instead of just being bad news.
On Tuesday, Trump even tweeted that official federal court documents were "fake news."
Kellyanne Conway said President Donald Trump has “the right” to exhaust his legal challenges, but acknowledged that Joe Biden appears headed to the White House as the next president of the United States.
“The president wants to exhaust all of his legal avenues, as he has made clear many times. His team is doing that, and that is his right,” Conway said in an interview with The 19th’s Washington correspondent, Amanda Becker, that aired Friday. “If you look at the vote totals in the Electoral College tally, it looks like Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will prevail. I assume the electors will certify that and it will be official. We, as a nation, will move forward, because we always do.”
Conway also pledged to work with “future administrations,” saying: “If there’s anything I can ever do to help … they can count on me.”
“You always need a peaceful transfer of democracy, no matter whose administration goes into whose administration,” she added.
Biden was declared the winner by multiple media outlets on November 7, receiving 306 Electoral College votes and more than 81 million votes — more than any presidential candidate in U.S. history and 7 million more than Trump. The president continues to raise concerns about voter irregularities and widespread fraud despite a lack of evidence and Chris Krebs, the former director of U.S. cybersecurity and infrastructure security, declaring the 2020 election “the most secure in election history.”
Conway, a longtime Republican pollster who made history in 2016 as the first woman to successfully manage a winning presidential campaign, joined a “Live with The 19th” event focused on the women’s electorate in 2020 for a wide-ranging interview.
Conway dismissed the narrative of a “women’s vote,” emphasizing that women are not monolithic in their politics and that there were misconceptions about conservative women in polling this cycle.
“Women and men usually care about the same issues, but sometimes they look at them very differently,” Conway said, pointing out the role of the pandemic as a factor in how women voted, calling them the “chief health care officers of their households.”
“Women had a certain stake in 2020 that nobody could’ve seen coming early on that ended up being a defining issue for many Americans,” she said. “Women will continue to surprise us. Sometimes they repeat history and sometimes they make it as voters.”
Conway said she was surprised by what she saw as a messaging absence among Democrats of a perennially polarizing issue during the campaign cycle: abortion.
“In past Democratic conventions, it’s all you heard about,” Conway said, pointing to a Washington Post analysis of frequently-used words at this summer’s Democratic and GOP conventions that showed Democrats barely mentioned the issue, while Republicans did so more than thirty times. “It’s very fascinating to me that this time, particularly with a woman on the Democratic ticket, that you heard very little.”
Conway said that while women are usually late-in-the-game deciders, the pandemic and mail-in balloting drove some to the polls amid the twists and turns of the election process. The presumption that the president’s divisive rhetoric or Twitter threads would turn off conservative women — who doubled down on Trump in November according to early exit polling, in contrast to what many polls indicated heading into the election — was among the misconceptions she said the Trump campaign saw, and that she called harmful to voter participation.
Among Trump’s most loyal and longest-serving advisers and a Washington political veteran, Conway credited Trump with giving her a pioneering role as campaign manager and said it’s important for women to have a seat at the table.
“I had worked arduously in politics and polling … there was a certain exclusion of me in the party and the big job sometimes,” Conway said. “I never got the big gig.”
Trump, she continued, “elevated me and, more importantly, empowered me.”
“When he asked me to be campaign manager, he and I didn’t realize no woman had ever done it for a Republican campaign,” Conway said. “He wanted me to do it because he thought I had great political instincts and organizational skills, was great on TV and was very good with the staff.”
During her tenure, Conway was a staunch defender of the president and a key messenger for his politics and policies. Within days of Trump taking office in January 2016, Conway coined the phrase “alternative facts” in an interview where she discussed former press secretary Sean Spicer’s remarks exaggerating the crowd size on Inauguration Day in his first White House briefing with reporters.
Conway left the White House in August and said in a statement that she was stepping down to focus on her family. She continues to advise Trump informally and spoke with him as recently as this week.
Asked about her future plans, Conway declined to elaborate on what she will do next, but said she continues to concentrate on her four children in the pandemic who are mostly learning virtually.
“I’m sure I’ll have a foot in politics still, but I really loved public service,” said Conway, who added she will continue her work on opioid addiction as well as doing some public speaking, writing and consulting.
She also hopes to use the lessons learned from the pandemic to help in a nonprofit or public service role.
“My kids are privileged … What this pandemic has done has created another pandemic within it for many of our nation’s schoolchildren,” Conway said. “I wouldn’t mind being part of the solution on the back end for how we make up for all that lost time and the mental health challenges that go with that.”
Breitbart screengrab.[/caption]