US Politics Mega-thread - Page 6941

President Donald Trump's personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, was at the center of a bombshell New York Times report published Sunday that said he hand-delivered a "peace plan for Russia and Ukraine" to former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn before Flynn was asked to resign.

The plan — which The Times said was pushed by Cohen, businessman Felix Sater, and Ukrainian lawmaker Andrii Artemenko — involved lifting sanctions on Russia in return for Moscow withdrawing its support for pro-Russia separatists in eastern Ukraine, according to the report. It would also allow Russia to maintain control over Crimea, which it annexed in 2014.

Hours after the Times story was published, however, Cohen told The Washington Post that he hadn't delivered the peace plan to Flynn nor discussed it with anyone in the White House.

In an interview with The Post, Cohen corroborated The Times' reporting that he had met with Sater and Artemenko in a hotel lobby on Park Avenue in Manhattan in late January to discuss the proposal. He said that the meeting lasted less than 15 minutes and that he left with the plan in hand.

However, he "emphatically" denied "discussing this topic or delivering any documents to the White House and/or General Flynn," adding that he told Artemenko that he could "send the proposal to Flynn by writing him at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.," The Post reported.

Cohen shifted his story again on Monday, telling Business Insider in a series of text messages that he denies "even knowing what the plan is." But he said in a later message that he met with Artemenko in New York for "under 10 minutes" to discuss a proposal that Artemenko said "was acknowledged by Russian authorities that would create world peace."

"My response was, 'Who doesn't want world peace?'" Cohen said.

One of the Times reporters who broke the peace-plan story, Scott Shane, pointed Business Insider to a statement the newspaper's deputy managing editor gave on Sunday: "Mr. Cohen told The Times in no uncertain terms that he delivered the Ukraine proposal to Michael Flynn's office at the White House. Mr. Sater told the Times that Mr. Cohen had told him the same thing."

Cohen then appeared to alter his story again, telling NBC News that even if he had taken an envelope with a peace plan to the White House, "So what? What's wrong with that?"

Sater, a businessman of Russian descent who has boasted of his relationship with President Donald Trump, told The Post in May that he "handled all of the negotiations" for the Trump Organization's dealings in Russia in the mid-2000s. Trump has distanced himself from Sater, saying in sworn testimony as part of a 2013 lawsuit that "if he were sitting in the room right now, I really wouldn't know what he looked like."

Sater told The Post that he thought Cohen was going to deliver the plan to Flynn but that Cohen had to wait because Flynn was in the middle of a Russia-related firestorm.

Cohen was named as a "liaison" between Trump and the Kremlin in the explosive, unsubstantiated dossier that surfaced last month, a summary of which had been presented by top US intelligence officials to Trump.

Sater was "not practicing diplomacy" in pushing the plan, which he entertained only because he "wanted to promote peace," he told Fox News on Monday. He did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Artemenko, who met with Trump's campaign during the election, was also involved in drafting the proposal. Artemenko told The Times he had evidence of Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko's corruption that could lead to his ouster.

Poroshenko has been locked in a war with pro-Russia separatists in eastern Ukraine since he took power in 2014. He is considered friendlier to the West than his ousted predecessor, Viktor Yanukovych. Yanukovych's political rise was heavily aided by former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, who worked as an adviser on Yanukovych's presidential campaign.

Cohen called the reporting surrounding the meeting "#fakenews." He said he stands by his story that he didn't do anything with the plan.

"Change your fake story or lose my number," Cohen said. "I have no time for Trump haters."

Milo Yiannopoulos, the revolting bête noire of the Alt-Right, a person who is such a reactionary American that he's British, seems to have made a critical mistake. Surely, conventional wisdom holds, even Republicans will balk at being asked to equate liberty with child molestation?

As onetime conservative talk show host Charlie Sykes put it, "Anti-Semitism, ok. Racism, ok. Alt-right, ok. Advocacy of pedophilia? Is THAT the bridge too far?"

Along with longtime Breitbart cohort Steve Bannon, the foppish Yiannopoulos – the co-author of the Alt-Right's unofficial manifesto – has until now been extremely successful in selling the various intellectual justifications for Trumpism.

In particular, he's been one of the main voices pushing the idea that Donald Trump's most lurid and offensive behaviors are "conservative," because they represent a front in the war against speech limits and political correctness.

"He'd rather grab a pussy than be one," was Milo's pithy take on then candidate Trump's Access Hollywood scandal.

Not all traditional conservatives bought these clunky rhetorical gymnastics, which were designed to give Fox viewers permission to vote a Bible-averse, model-humping New Yorker into the White House. But enough did to win Trump the presidency.

Still, there has been a lingering unwillingness among the National Review/Weekly Standard crew of Reagan Republicans to embrace Yiannopoulos and all he represents. That unwillingness spilled into open conflict when the loathsome campus agitator was named a keynote speaker at this week's Conservative Political Action Conference.

A blog called the Reagan Battalion re-circulated excerpts of a year-old interview of Milo by the Drunken Peasants podcast, in which he clearly endorses sex between men and underage boys.

Yiannopoulos talked about how "we get hung up on this kind of child abuse stuff," dismissing what he calls the "oppressive idea of consent."

"In the homosexual world particularly," said Yiannopoulos, who is gay, "some of those relationships between younger boys and older men [are] sort of coming-of-age relationships ... in which those older men have helped those young boys to discover who they are."

When one of the podcast co-hosts suggested that it sounded like he was talking about Catholic priest molestation, Yiannopoulous quickly co-signed, claiming personal experience in that area.

"You know what?" he shouted. "I'm grateful for Father Michael. I wouldn't give nearly such good head if it wasn't for him."

When challenged that he seemed to be endorsing pedophilia, Yiannopoulos then retreated to a semantic argument.

"You're misunderstanding what pedophilia means," he said. "Pedophilia is not a sexual attraction to somebody 13 years old, who is sexually mature. Pedophilia is attraction to children who have not reached puberty."

After a scandal blew up over these words, Yiannopoulos used a technique that Donald Trump has used often in the past two years: He simply claimed he didn't say what he said.

Blaming "sloppy editing" for the controversy, Yiannopoulos insisted on his Facebook page, "I was talking about my own relationship when I was 17 with a man who was 29." He added, "The age of consent in the UK is 16. That was a mistake."

This was despite the fact that Yiannopoulos explicitly talked about "sexually mature" 13-year-olds in the context of who can and cannot be a consenting adult. He has made similar remarks before – he revels in them, in fact. When he appeared on the Joe Rogan podcast last summer, for instance, he couldn't help himself when Rogan brought up the "semen warrior" culture in Papua New Guinea.

"These men who take these young boys, " said Rogan, "and inseminate them, and put cum in their mouths and their asses to make them grow..."

"Sounds like homosexuality," Yiannoploulos quipped. "Sounds great."

The furor currently raging over Yiannopoulos's comments is exactly the sort of thing this professional button-pusher relishes. Like Trump, his shtick is to say crazy things to get attention, and then manipulate ears and eyeballs to his advantage mid-furor.

A favored tactic is to direct his audiences toward some overemotional sap who has made the mistake of calling for him to be banned, at which point he triumphantly declares himself a champion of liberty, and his enemies censors and authoritarians.

In his Alt-Right manifesto, Milo self-consciously celebrates the trolling phenomenon as something inspired, meaningful and "undeniably hysterical." And like all trolls, Yiannopoulos thinks his provocations are brilliant, when actually he's just a goof with an accent and a C-minus mind who says witlessly obnoxious things and through sheer accident of historical circumstance gets rewarded for it.

He seems genuinely to believe that he's one of the first people ever to notice that you can make a good living through lying and the unscrupulous use of hate speech. With the confidence of a person who hasn't yet discovered the depth of his own unoriginality, he leans into controversies instead of recoiling from them, sure he can always spin things in a pinch.

One of his main affectations is a flaunting of duplicity as a revolutionary virtue. For instance, it was predictable that this longtime critic of "victimhood culture" would cling to his own victimhood in a crisis.

"I am a gay man, and a child abuse victim," he wrote, cloaking himself in multiple layers of the very identity politics he claims to despise. He even used AIDS patients as a human shield, which was a bit excessive even for him, but not out of character:

"If I choose to deal in an edgy way on an Internet livestream with a crime I was the victim of that's my prerogative. It's no different to gallows humor from Aids [sic] sufferers."

The "oppressive idea of consent" rant seems to have created problems for Yiannopoulos. Staffers at Breitbart, where he is a senior editor, are threatening to walk out unless he's fired. Moreover, he's been disinvited from CPAC, a development he will no doubt portray as an overreaction by a defeated and humorless Republican establishment.

Milo's obvious play will be to use all of this coverage as free PR, seeking to come out the other side with his rebel credentials burnished. He'll recreate himself as a Republican martyr, unfairly maligned by a corrupt priesthood that fears the true movement.

On the outside, this looks like a mistake. The Bannonite Alt-Right crew Milo represents imagines itself a brilliant group of intellectual danger-seekers, but trying to sell boy-buggering to the American Conservative Union sure seems more stupid than daring (and it's plenty daring).

After all, the success of the Trump movement depends upon a nervous coalition of aging religious conservatives and young, race-baiting, Internet-addicted morons – the people GOP consultant Rick Wilson once called "childless single men who masturbate to anime."

The link between these two groups has always been tenuous at best. Really, it's an absurd semantic misunderstanding, a classic Americanism, confusing the words "liberty" and "libertine."

There's a big difference between believing in limited government, and completely rejecting all behavioral and sexual morality. But people like Yiannopoulos and Trump have been successful at blurring these lines, because we're not a very bright people. Also, we're inexperienced when it comes to this kind of high-level political con artistry.

A dynamic that all good swindlers understand is that once you've gotten a person to make one embarrassing decision, it's easier to get him to make the next one. A person who loses 10 grand trying to buy the Brooklyn Bridge is a good bet to spend 20 more chasing the loss. Con artists call this "reloading."

The Trump phenomenon has been like this. Megachurch moms and dads across the country grit their teeth when the "grab them by the pussy" tape came out, quietly convincing themselves that "locker-room talk" was less horrifying than a Hillary Clinton presidency.

When they cast their votes weeks later, it was like a secret transgression that bound them to the new leader. This counter-intuitive brand of politics is very effective. It's why no one should be too quick to put this week's seeming fiasco with CPAC in the Republicans' loss column.

One would think the last thing you'd want to do if your intent was to hold a fragile Republican coalition together is pitch Milo Yiannopoulos as a defender of family values. Why would the Mike Pence crowd ever rally behind a Brit with frosted hair who brags about getting blowjobs from priests? It seems preposterous.

But watch it work. A week from now, the same conservatives who are beating their breasts about Yiannopoulos now will go crawling back into the Trump camp to fight the hated liberals on a dozen other issues. They will look weak and indecisive, and privately will be demoralized, while the Trump/Bannon/Milo crew will look like poker players who won a bluff. It's always about the next news cycle with these people.

Trolling doesn't take brains. But it works, and it will keep working, until we learn to see through the provocations in real time.

President Donald Trump on Tuesday evening portrayed the heated reception some Republican lawmakers are getting at their town halls as fiction, instead accusing liberal activists of ginning up negative headlines.

"The so-called angry crowds in home districts of some Republicans are actually, in numerous cases, planned out by liberal activists. Sad!" Trump tweeted.

GOP lawmakers on recess, including Sen. Chuck Grassley, are getting an earful in their home districts, with some constituents railing against Trump's plans to repeal Obamacare, his controversial Cabinet nominees and his Supreme Court pick.

Hill Republicans have accused liberal mega-donors of bankrolling a tide of local protesters, but organizing groups have denied that their efforts are being fueled by notable donors such as George Soros.

On February 22 2017 04:44 LegalLord wrote:
Wouldn't be surprised if people here supported a military coup to depose Trump. For a lot of folks, their hatred of Trump burns brighter than a thousand suns.

On February 22 2017 08:56 xDaunt wrote:

I'd be very surprised if this was the end for Milo. He's a creature of his own creation with his own massive following. He's not dependent upon Breitbart or any other media platform. He's going to get his book out, and it's going to be a bestseller. Milo's free speech message is too important and too alluring for him to simply fade away. This is only the beginning for him.

On February 22 2017 09:24 Mohdoo wrote:


He'll always have his fringe, but did you hear the recording in question? College campuses and those sorts of things are not going to be giving him a home anymore. My point is regarding big picture stuff, Milo giving the right some new voice. That part is toast, but he will of course keep a huge following.

On February 22 2017 09:11 Doodsmack wrote:
He will still be around but it's undoubtedly a blow to him, and one he deserved, considering what he did to Leslie Jones and others.

On February 22 2017 09:48 Danglars wrote:

He hardly even trolled her. Like, you could've done a better shitpost than Milo. Teases her spelling and grammar, victimhood peddling ...

You're better off staying on the age of consent laws being too hot to discuss. --Obligatory "it's 2017" and people are still throwing fits about mean things being said to them on the internet.

On February 22 2017 09:57 GreenHorizons wrote:


lol, because it's "middle class" white folks who are the real victims in America, or so everyone wants us to believe.

Cuts in Donald Trump’s first draft budget to funding for legal aid for millions of Americans could strip much-needed protections from victims of domestic violence, people with disabilities, families facing foreclosure and veterans in need, justice equality advocates warned Tuesday.

A Trump draft budget circulated over the weekend called for the elimination of the Legal Services Corporation (LSC), which has a $375m annual budget and provides free legal assistance to low-income people and others in need of help, with cases involving disability benefits, disaster relief, elder abuse, fair pay, wheelchair access, low-income tax credits, unlawful eviction, child support, consumer scams, school lunch, predatory lending and much more.

The legal aid program, which represents a miniscule portion of the government’s projected $4tn budget, is one of many small but mighty programs flagged for elimination in Trump’s draft budget. Others include the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Americorps and the National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities. Critics of the cuts point out that they won’t budge the deficit but would erode quality of life and threaten the most vulnerable.

The possible legal aid cuts would come at a time when potentially softer enforcement by the Trump administration of laws to punish domestic violence, protect Americans with disabilities and combat discriminatory housing practices could create a spike in demand, said Rebecca Buckwalter-Poza, a fellow at the Center for American Progress who has written on the issue.

“We’ve already gotten an indication that they’re probably going to cut grants for domestic violence cases, VAWA-related grants, and that’s one of the biggest categories that legal aid grantees use,” Buckwalter-Poza said, referring to the Violence Against Women Act. “This is a huge blow to women in particular, and that’s devastating.

“And what’s so disturbing about the potential for the administration to eliminate LSC altogether is that at the same time, you have a Department of Justice that’s probably not going to enforce the types of legislation on the government’s side that supplements private action, like the Fair Housing Act or the Americans With Disabilities Act. And at the same time that they’re going to stop doing that, people are going to have fewer options for seeking out free legal assistance.”

Linda Klein, president of the American Bar Association, the lawyers’ organization, said that the Legal Services Corporation assured “access to justice for all, the very idea that propelled our nation to independence”.

“Our nation’s core values are reflected in the LSC’s work in securing housing for veterans, freeing seniors from scams, serving rural areas when others won’t, protecting battered women, helping disaster survivors back to their feet, and many others,” Klein said in a statement. “Thirty cost-benefit analyses all show that legal aid returns far more benefits than costs to communities across America.”

The legal services corporation was created by a 1974 law, signed by Richard Nixon, acknowledging a “need to provide equal access to the system of justice in our nation”. The corporation helped an estimated 1.8m people in 2013, 70% of them women living near or below the poverty line. But studies indicate that legal aid offices turn away about 50% of clients in need owing to a lack of resources.

Trump’s proposed budget is not all – or even mostly – cuts. It emerged on Tuesday that the president had directed the Department of Homeland Security to hire 10,000 more customs and immigration agents. Trump has vowed to build a border wall costing billions and to ramp up military spending.

On February 22 2017 10:01 Nemireck wrote:


I mean, middle class anything are more victims than a black, millionaire celebrity.

On February 22 2017 10:11 Plansix wrote:

As someone who is on the opposing end of these legal services from time to time, they are desperately needed.

On February 22 2017 09:48 Danglars wrote:
He hardly even trolled her. Like, you could've done a better shitpost than Milo. Teases her spelling and grammar, victimhood peddling ...

On February 22 2017 10:13 ChristianS wrote:

It's pretty Trumpian, though, to make the little guy bankrupt himself on legal fees trying to use the justice system.

On February 22 2017 10:16 TheYango wrote:
This was the same even when the internet wasn't around. What a random nobody says in a public space and what an acknowledged person of some notoriety says are judged very differently by the public.