Dad “has no moral or legal compass.”
3/21/17: Hacked phone messages from one daughter of Paul Manafort (Trump’s former campaign manager) to another indicate she believes their father has given them “blood money.”
Dad “has no moral or
legal compass.” “You know he has killed people in the Ukraine? Knowingly,” she
continues.
___
3/22/17: The Associated Press reports that Manafort worked with a Russian billionaire and friend of Vladimir Putin. He was paid as much as $12.7 million to “advance the interests of Russia [emphasis added].”
Press Secretary Spicer tries to
explain that the former campaign
manager “played a very limited role for a very limited amount of
time” during the 2016 campaign. (See:
3/23/17.)
Poor Sean Spicer!
He
may have the worst job in America.
___
3/23/17: Did members of the Trump campaign have illegal contact with the Russians? No one knows for sure; but Paul Manafort is revealed to have had ties to a bank in Cyprus that laundered money for the Russians. He used 15 different accounts and operated 10 different shell companies.
Could he be innocent? Yes. But reporting on such ties is not “fake news.”
It’s…reporting.
___
3/24/17: Speaker Ryan is forced to pull the GOP
healthcare law without a vote. After talking about “repeal and replace” for
months, Trump responds by blaming others. He says Democrats killed the plan!
___
3/25/17: National Poison Prevention Week ends, having been proclaimed by Trump executive order. Finally, something Americans can agree on! Poison is bad. Unless it’s environmental.
Under the Trump administration the E.P.A.
no longer cares.
___
3/26/17: Roger Stone, longtime Trump pal, offers
to testify in front of Congress. Did he contact Guccifer 2.0, a hacking group
known to be a front for Russian intelligence agencies? Well, yes, he admits,
maybe he did now that he thinks about it. But Stone insists Guccifer isn’t a
Russian front. And who are you going to believe, Stone or U.S. intelligence,
which says it is? (See: June 1,
2018.)
___
3/27/17: Son-in-law
Jared Kushner gets a whole bunch of jobs
in the new administration. These include serving as top policy advisor and
“primary point of contact” with leaders and ambassadors from many foreign
nations, heading up the White House Office of
American Innovation, which will be “expected to tackle domestic issues such as
Veterans’ Affairs, workforce development and opioid addiction,” and helping
“run the government like a great American business.” Also, he must chaperone Ivanka
during all dinners and black-tie affairs at Mar-a-Lago.
A previously undisclosed meeting.
Anything else we should know about Jared?
White House spokesperson Hope Hicks admits Kushner had a previously undisclosed meeting in December 2016 with the head of a Russian bank facing U.S. sanctions.
Even more interesting,
the bank provided cover for Russian spying in New York City in 2014.
___
3/28/17: A new Gallup poll shows job approval
for the Tweeter-in-Chief has slumped to 35%.
___
3/29/17: In another early-morning tweet-storm Trump cries about the unfair coverage he’s getting. “If the people of our great country could only see how viciously and inaccurately my administration is covered by certain media!”
Well, there’s
always Fox & Friends…and Bill O’Reilly. (See: 4/5/17.)
___
3/30/17: U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley tells reporters: “You pick and choose your battles and when we’re looking at this [fighting in Syria], it’s about changing up priorities and our priority is no longer to sit there and focus on getting [Bashar al-] Assad out.” Secretary of State Rex Tillerson agrees.
Syria?
Not our problem. (See: 4/7/17.)
___
3/31/17: A judge finalizes a settlement against Trump University, awarding students who were defrauded $25 million. During the campaign, Trump promised to fight this to the bitter end.
Sadly, the settlement
does not require the president to admit he’s a scam artist.
